Tag: election

Too good to be trusted?

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Lately, as Vivek Ramaswamy gains more notice in the polls, I notice more than a few negative Xeets(?) on the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Too good to be true,” “too esoteric,” “too slick,” – basically criticisms of his presentation. The impression you are supposed to get is that he’s a snake oil salesman; because the followup dissing is, “this guy just popped up out of nowhere,” “Soros?, WEF?”.

This doesn’t come from Progs. It comes from a subset of Republicans. The WEF and Soros connections are BS ad hominem complaints unworthy of any opponents of Joe Biden. They are worthy of Dan Goldman, Adam Schiff, or Eric Swallwell.

This sniping illustrates an OnlyTrump apprehension that Ramaswamy understands and presents MAGA better than Trump does. They do the same thing to Ron DeSantis for the same reasons.

If we’re criticizing the presentation of MAGA, maybe we need to consider whether Trump is the only vessel capable of it.

We should hope he is not. Trump is not forever, he’s 77. Fortunately, he is NOT the point of MAGA.

IAC, Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t exactly come from nowhere. I posted this in May 2021, but it seems appropriate to post again. 26 minutes. Via Hillsdale College:
Woke Capitalism Against America | Vivek Ramaswamy

There is a quite recent Ramaswamy interview with Jordan Peterson worth a watch just to observe Ramaswamy in conversation rather than with a set speech. It’s obvious he has thought long and hard about politics. And life.

There’s a segment where he talks about how he and his wife (a highly regarded throat surgeon) handle the stress of separate careers with two small children. They both thought long and hard about that, even before he decided to run for POTUS.

If you are of an OnlyTrump frame of mind you will agree completely with the Twitter criticisms I’ve noted. Or, for that matter, EVERY criticism of any candidate not named Donald.

While Ramaswamy is not likely to best Trump in the fight for the nomination, the contrasts with Trump are not so much in Trump’s favor. Ramaswamy has the certainty of Trump and is vastly more articulate. He speaks with crystal clarity. None of the ambiguity that repeatedly got Trump in trouble. Ramaswamy speaks specifically of American law and tradition when he explains his policy positions. This has not been a Trump strength.

If you are an OnlyTrumper absolute certainty in your candidate does not give you the slightest qualm. Yet Ramaswamy’s well articulated and seriously considered certainty, 90% congruent with Trump’s, seems to irritate you. So, how can you trust him? It’s early yet. And I’m unsure, but I did find one test.

As a rough measure of trust I compared Ramaswamy’s extemporaneity with Peterson’s. One of Peterson’s endearing features is that he frequently pauses when exploring his own ideas. You can see him thinking, “Is this true?, Is this how I should say it?”

Ramaswamy doesn’t do this, at least in the interview. In his defense he is speaking about well known issues. I doubt there is a policy question that would throw him.

I would like to see him grapple with concepts he hasn’t thoroughly explored, that would be a different interview.

IAC, so far I trust his certainty more than I trust Trump’s. He has historical justification, a superior grasp of economics, a better understanding of the law, and a first generation immigrant’s appreciation of what MAGA should be. And he wouldn’t be Joe Biden’s age by the end of the next POTUS term.

Remembrance of chads hanging

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Naomi Wolfe was an Al Gore presidential campaign advisor in 2000. She instructed him (among other things) on not ‘presenting’ as a Beta male. This was impossible, but Al was desperate.

Wolfe has been red pilled. She’s been mugged by the Overton Window, which, true to form, framed a much more sane view in 2000. She has detected the shift. I subscribe to her Substack.

She remembers the 2000 election controversy very well.
“Happy Indictment Day!” – Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf

I am experiencing considerable inner turmoil at the spectacle of President Trump’s indictment, as well as at the almost animalistic glee that this spectacle has triggered in the solid bloc of Democrats that currently surrounds me.

I am extraordinarily sad — at the thickheaded ignorance of history that those who are celebrating tonight, reveal; and at what has become of our country.

Don’t people understand — much as they may hate this fellow — that this is exactly what coup leaders in every banana republic, do? Seek to imprison their political opponents?

Especially while the political opponents are on the campaign trail?

Another reason for my discomfort and misery is that I have a guilty conscience, because of what I experienced two decades ago and what I know — things that not that many people have experienced or know, and things that seem to be generally forgotten. These memories bear directly on current events…

I am having relentless flashbacks to where I was and what I was doing in late 2000, when I was a consultant for Vice President Gore’s campaign for the Presidency.

As I’ve written elsewhere — and as I am trying desperately to remind everyone who will now listen, on every podcast that will have me — I was advising from a distance, and looped in, intermittently, to discussions within the campaign that were both public and private, about exactly the same issues that are now apparently criminal offenses even to entertain, let alone to mention in actual words.

So were almost all of the lawyers, campaign consultants, advisors and staffers of Gore 2000. So was the candidate himself, visibly.

RTWT

Senatorial gravitas?

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I hear Senate incumbent Raphael Warnock (D, GA) says challenger Herschel Walker (R, GA) will not be able to cope with the cognitive demands of being a Senator.

What is Warnock’s opinion of John Fetterman’s Senatorial capability? Was he ever asked?

Should Mehmet Oz have used this tactic against Fetterman in PA?

If not, why not?

Hillary. Projecting.

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Hillary Clinton: “Right-Wing Extremists Already Have A Plan To Literally Steal The Next Presidential Election”

If she were serious, and constrained by logic, she would be supporting some voting process which would:

    1) Ensure every voter is a) a citizen, b) who they say they are, c) not deceased, d) registered in a single state (yes, c and d are redundant with b, but Jocelyn Benson isn’t the only Dem SecState who had to be sued to purge voter rolls of dead people);

    2) Ensure ballot integrity. Meaning a) no illegitimate vote (see 1) is counted, b) polling places are closely monitored by both major parties without interference, c) voting machine software is open source, d) no unsolicited mail in ballots are sent (for example, to the P.O Boxes of vacant lots), e) ballot harvesting is outlawed, f) military ballots are counted, if properly postmarked, in any state where the number of military personnel could potentially change the outcome, even when delivered a month after election day.

That would be, literally, a good start on stopping ‘election theft.’ The only thing on that list about which reasonable might disagree is voter ID.

Therein lies a problem. Some of the people putatively portrayed as reasonable by the legacy media (Stacy Abrams, Joe Biden), still invoke Jim Crow laws as a reason to suppress the votes of living citizens by insisting deceased and/or non-citizens have a right to dilute legitimate voter rolls.

We are substantially past the Jim Crow era.

On the other hand, we are not past ballot fraud. Technology and the relaxing of ballot verification have made it easier than ever. No one worried about ‘election theft’ would countenance it. Much less promote it.

I won’t go into the simple utilitarian argument that voter ID is a much smaller threat to the Republic (it is not a Democracy) than violating the other restraints I have mentioned. You could look this up and form your own opinion.

Given Hillary’s history, do you think her advice is credible? Or is it partisan political maneuvering and personal spite?

Let’s hear your proposal, Ms. Rodham. Does it involve Sid “Vicious” Blumnenthal as Federal Election Czar?

The pre-theft of election plots, like suppression of the Hillary email story, and the Hunter Biden laptop story, is left to another post.

Mau-mauing the swamp dwellers

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Facebook and YouTube continue to bury, or outright ban, well founded commentary on CCP virus public policy and the myriad election irregularities of which the Uniparty disapproves.

They aren’t alone. Amazon has banned books. Twitter banned all mention of Hunter Biden’s laptop, including suspending the New York Post‘s account.

That ban arguably lasted long enough to affect the election, and now that we know Hunter Biden has been under Federal criminal investigation since 2019 for his foreign business dealings, it seems like Twitter, et. al., should have some accountability.

The article slice below is behind a paywall. I think Glenn Greenwald is worth the less than a buck a week as an honest liberal entrepreneur. You pay as much for the CNN/MSNBC/CBS/PBS/ABC/NBC channels on your cable.

Some of what he writes is public. A link appears in TOC’s blogroll under Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald left The Intercept (he was a founder) because they spiked an article he wrote about Hunter Biden before the election. That’s when I checked out his independent gig on Substack.

Greenwald (this one is paywalled) provides a gimlet eyed view:

The revelation that Hunter Biden is being criminally investigated for his business activities in China came on Monday from the investigative target himself, and he predictably and self-servingly depicted it as just a narrow probe about his “tax affairs” by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware. As I wrote last night, that by itself would be significant enough — the documents published in the weeks before the election by The New York Post contained ample information about exactly that matter, yet were widely repressed by a union of mainstream news outlets, the intelligence community and Silicon Valley based on propaganda and lies. But new reporting suggest the investigation has been far broader.

“The federal investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been more extensive than a statement from Hunter Biden indicates,” Politico reported Monday night. Specifically, “the securities fraud unit in the Southern District of New York also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s finances”; “investigators in Delaware and Washington were also probing potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties”; and “federal authorities in the Western District of Pennsylvania are conducting a criminal investigation of a hospital business in which Joe Biden’s brother James was involved.” CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz added that “at least one of the matters investigators have examined is a 2017 gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC [China Energy’]’s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming after a Miami business meeting.”

We’re slipping into fascism backwards. One normally thinks of the formal government (Mussolini comes to mind) as the instigator of fascism*, but in the current case it’s most certainly rent-seeking large corporations leading the charge. And that goes far beyond our cybernetic overlords. It’s also Maim Scream Media™, academiots, and corporate whores mau-mauing the swamp dwellers.

Of course, Antifa and the present cadre of BLM have raised mau-mauing to an actually dangerous level with arson, looting, assault, and murder. They would be the brownshirts.

Then, there’s this:
Hunter Biden Email Reportedly Names Kamala Harris, Others as Key Contacts for ‘Joint Venture’ With China Energy Co

Perhaps Eric Swalwell could do with a serious “debriefing.”

*That definition is fatally flawed because it includes a mention of capitalism, but the misunderstanding is pervasive. Free markets are required under capitalism. Fascism precludes free markets.

Trust, integrity

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Not quite a year ago, three US Senators and a Representative were sufficiently worried about the integrity of US voting technology – “an integral part of our nation’s democratic process.” – that they wrote to the private investment firms owning majority shares in the three largest voting machine vendors: Dominion, Hart InterCivic, and Election Systems & Software.

These were Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA), Amy Klobuchar (WI), Ron Wyden (OR), and Representative Marc Pocan (WI). Senator Warren has posted a copy of the letter on her official website, here.

The letter goes on to say:

“Election security experts have noted for years that our nation’s election systems and infrastructure are under serious threat. In January 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security designated the United States’ election infrastructure as “critical infrastructure” in order to prioritize the protection of our elections and to more effectively assist state and local election officials in addressing these risks. However, voting machines are reportedly falling apart across the country, as vendors neglect to innovate and improve important voting systems, putting our elections at avoidable and increased risk. In 2015, election officials in at least 31 states, representing approximately 40 million registered voters, reported that their voting machines needed to be updated, with almost every state “using some machines that are no longer manufactured.” Moreover, even when state and local officials work on replacing antiquated machines, many continue to “run on old software that will soon be outdated and more vulnerable to hackers.”

In a separate letter (March 2018) Senators Klobuchar and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) had written to the 3 election equipment vendors (as distinct from the investment firms):

“Recent reports of U.S. IT and software companies submitting to source code reviews in order to access foreign markets have raised concern in Congress given the sensitivity of the information requested by countries like China and the Russian Federation. As such, we write to inquire about the security of the voting machines you manufacture and whether your company has been asked to share the source code or other sensitive or proprietary details associated with your voting machines with the Russian Federation.”

The letters’ signatories are all Democrats.

My point is not that this is proof even Democrat legislators think the 2020 election was sufficiently fraudulent to justify overturning it.

It is that we have every reason to be alarmed about voting machines running Windows 7 in 2020 (11 years after Microsoft support ended), hardware consisting partially of Chinese parts, and whose software source code has been shared with Russia and China: Combined with a completely unprecedented number of mail in ballots one of the election contestants predicted would show their candidate a winner late in the count after trailing significantly. They were accurate. Perhaps presciently, in a year where every pollster overestimated their prospects.

A relatively minor effect? We can no longer even discuss voter ID. What does ID matter when only the rubes will even register to vote? Can you ID a voter whose signature on a mail-in ballot isn’t checked, or forged by a ballot counter? Can you ID a voter who may merely be a hidden algorithm or a Chinese hack? We need at least to think our elections matter.

That’s the point Warren, Klobuchar, Wyden, Shaheen, and Pocan were making.

Rasmussen’s poll tells us 30% of Democrats believe “it is very likely (20 percent) or somewhat likely (10 percent) that it [the election] was stolen.” This must be addressed. Even if 90% of that 30% approve of the theft. Especially then.

That 47% of all voters think Trump was robbed… that this percentage of the electorate can even contemplate this question should alarm us all even more than the possibility alarmed the letters’ signatories. All of whom are Democrats.

If there was ever an issue calling for bipartisanship; if there was ever an issue squarely within the purview of government regulation – this is it. Democrats and NeverTrumpers who contend that Trump’s refusal to concede until all legal remedies have been explored is an international embarrassment to the United States miss the mark. Our election process needs to be fixed. Our election machines need to be as hardened as our missile silos. At minimum, Trump’s suits should look at accomplishing that.

If no other outcome from the legal disputes over this election are forthcoming, EVERY American should wish that the real problem is solved. The embarrassment is that we can’t vote as believably as third world satrapies.

It’s not Trump’s apparent loss that rankles so much as it is the demand we uncritically trust the ballot counting in Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. Or else we’re deplorable, though I guess we are anyway.

Finally, if you think the concern over Chinese parts in American voting machines is a piffle, you should read this. If the Chinese are building backdoors into your “smart” doorbell, a soft target, please consider the value of backdoors into your electronic election systems. And combine that with the level of incompetence and overt deception we’ve seen in those conducting elections at the precinct level.

Evidence

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Most of the people demanding that Sidney Powell produce potentially witness endangering evidence, outside the courtroom, right now; are the same ones who insist, in spite of clear evidence to the contrary, that Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian dezinformatsiya. They are the same people who suppressed that story.

It has been just three weeks since the election. Recounts are still going on. If the allegations have any truth, the story will be very complex. Let’s remember it took Al Gore 37 days to concede after withdrawing his first concession in 2000. The only deadline is the day the Electoral College votes.

And, as Democrat Speaker of the House Tom Foley and George Mitchell, the Senate Democrat leader, said in a 1991 joint statement:

“These allegations [fake news about a 1980 deal with Iran to keep American hostages until after Carter lost] are both persistent and disturbing. We have no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, but the seriousness of the allegations, and the weight of circumstantial information, compel an effort to establish the facts.”

(This is often misquoted as, “Even though there is no evidence, the seriousness of the charge is what matters. The seriousness of the charge mandates that we investigate this.“. Which is a pretty good paraphrase, nonetheless.)

Democrats applied this same logic to the Steele dossier. The differences are that they were the source of the dossier, they were the source of leaking it, and they insist to this day it was true – despite evidence from their own Special Counsel.

I don’t want to believe in massive election fraud either, but over the last 5 years the Democrat leadership have demonstrated they are capable of such a conspiracy.

Nearly a Third of Democrats Believe the Election Was Stolen From Trump.