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What a great start to the Biden presidency.
Have we heard from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) on this?
No. We heard from the Republican Leader of the House, who voiced his disgust:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) at least took action.
Tens of thousands of troops, mostly National Guard, were sent to Washington, DC, to keep the capital safe before, during and after the inauguration, held on Wednesday, January 20, 2021.
Some of the troops were allowed to sleep in parts of the Capitol building, then, because Congress was in session after the inauguration, they were moved to a parking garage:
On January 21, Chad Pergram from Fox News reported:
Texas governor Greg Abbott (R) was so incensed, he requested that General Norris send the Texas contingent home:
Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) also asked for his state’s troops to return home:
The outrage was intense, because the troops were accommodated elsewhere by the next day:
The National Guard have day jobs in their home states, so, understandably, they were unimpressed with having been left out in the cold during mobilisation. Howard Altman, managing editor of the Military Times, reported:
Here are other reactions:
It is unclear who issued the order to move them to the parking garage:
Later, it was alleged that a Democrat congressman from Massachusetts wanted the troops out because they weren’t wearing masks at a nearby Dunkin Donuts:
Disgusting.
Here’s more:
Legislators from both sides of the aisle worked to right the wrong.
Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema (R-Arizona) offered her office to the troops:
Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina), a freshman Congressman, personally delivered pizzas:
Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), a military veteran who lost her legs in combat, worked tirelessly to make sure the decision was reversed:
Politico has more on the story but no real conclusions.
On Friday, January 22, Biden tried to make amends, but it was a lame gesture:
I am very glad this did not happen during President Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
In case you are wondering what he thought:
And, former President Trump also offered them accommodation:
Well, he was certainly the greatest president we will ever know.
Today’s guest post comes from my reader lynnfay73, a retired adjunct professor, who, last week, expressed her dismay and disappointment with both of America’s political parties after the past two presidential elections, the events of January 6, 2021 at the Capitol and President Trump’s second impeachment in the House of Representatives.
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Pen letter to Republicans from a disheartened libertarian:
I will be sending this hard copy to every senator and representative in US.
I’ll also send it to The Detroit News where I’ve been published before, though I may be censored there.
Open letter to Republican politicians from a disheartened libertarian
Dear Republican Leaders,
We Americans couldn’t be more dismayed at the state of the country, and we couldn’t be more disappointed in you.
I wasn’t a Donald Trump fan. I voted in the primaries for Marco Rubio who I thought articulated freedom the best I’d heard in a while (and having decided Rand Paul was unelectable). Donald Trump was an acquired taste to say the least. He’s made some mistakes, he’s no politician, but nowhere near the extent of the mistakes YOU have made.
Before Donald Trump even took office, the Democrats were calling for impeachment. They were allowed every day on all networks, even Fox News, for four years to call him illegitimate. A Russian asset, a traitor. A NAZI, HITLER. Hollywood circulated memes of him beheaded, did plays with people killing him as Julius Caesar, Madonna called for blowing up the White House, DeNiro and Biden threatening to beat him up. They lied about his words, blatantly, and the left journalists never called them on it, knowing full well he never said white supremacists were “good people”–he expressly said he meant those people who wanted to preserve the statues, NOT white supremacists whom he condemned immediately. And that went on and on. The man is a lot of things, but he’s no racist. And let’s not forget Maxine Waters’ calls for violence against Trump, openly, and Pelosi tearing up the State of the Union address. To name a few things.
Then they went on and weaponized Obama’s justice department to use Hillary Clinton bought and paid for (from Russians) dirty dossier which they used illegally (even by their own standards) to obtain illegal FISA warrants to spy on him and ruin Carter Page’s life by actually forging documents.
The press never changed the narrative and they severely threatened our Republic by doing all this. And the Never Trumpers are even more to blame. Lincoln Project? You have been a disgrace (and it appears maybe even degenerates) and you harmed the Republican party irreparably by not just staying quiet if he wasn’t YOUR cup of tea. The list is long on this. John McCain GAVE that dossier to the FBI and attacked Trump publicly as did Romney, and they wonder why they got the reaction they got. No excuse for that.
Then before this latest election, the left media and Big Tech and the Democrats censored the conservative news — true news, about the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine and China (the other phony impeachment crap was to hide and accuse people of what THEY had been doing for four years — using the justice department against a political opponent and covering up their own corruption). They have now carried that to the extreme that not only have they censored the president of the United States, they have silenced the conservative ability to communicate. And they are raising this unrest to fever pitch by these actions alone.
It is the height of hypocrisy to call this mess at the capitol “insurrection” when the left (and even the never-Trumpers) have been stoking just that for four years in an attempt to overturn a duly elected presidential election.
But what is the most egregious is that YOU are such cowards that instead of ALL standing up to force a ten-day investigation– into what is election practices half this country has no intention of accepting going forward– most of you chickened out in the elitist establishment hope that you could hold the senate but get rid of Trump. His list of accomplishments will not be appreciated for a while which is a very big shame AND you have divided this party irreparably. It is YOU who cost us Georgia, mostly because you refuse to insist on election integrity.
And that is why this happened on Jan. 6th, not because of Donald Trump.
None of us thought this election would be overturned. We wanted it investigated and we want election reform NOW. You cowards should have stood by him and insisted that this happen as the American people wanted.
No, this does not excuse violence (though the left excuses it any time they want to), but Donald Trump is not responsible for it. The left is responsible for it with all their actions of the last four years and YOU establishment elitists who are really nothing more than Democrats in disguise–YOU are responsible for it. No idea what you are doing in this party.
And had you had his back the whole time, he could have been more measured in his actions and responses all along. I wonder how any of you would have held up to this kind of abuse, never before seen in American political history.
I will be working to get rid of any of you I can: McConnell, Romney, Sasse, Kinzinger, Cheney, and the rest of you. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), Tom Rice (R-S.C.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) who just voted to impeach Donald Trump.
There are some patriots here (even if their motives might be political) — Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz, Elise Stefanik, Mo Brooks, and more (and some who might be excused for arguing constitutional issues like states’ rights — Mike Lee, Rand Paul).
It’s fine if you didn’t prefer Donald Trump’s style; it is NOT fine that your arrogance and elitist superiority and cowardice (Democrats never would have done this–say what you want about their motives — they play hardball) have resulted in this country embarking on an authoritarian nightmare that could once never have been contemplated in America let alone practiced.
We won’t forget.
L. Fay
Adjunct Professor (retired)
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Lynn’s is an excellent letter. I am grateful she allowed it to be reprinted as a guest post.
Monday’s edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight on Fox Business Network was an eye-opener for those who had hoped for the best.
Earlier in the day, we saw the guest list, most prominently Leo Terrell, a well known civil rights lawyer:
These are the segments in order of his January 11 show.
Watch them and weep.
As the old saying in Europe goes, ‘When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold’.
Lou began by reporting that, along with social media, ‘corporate America’ is repudiating President Donald J Trump:
Hmm. Interesting.
Many of us learned in history class — perhaps long ago — that fascism involved government co-opting corporations to do its will.
Tom Fitton from Judicial Watch was up next. He said that the Left’s — Democrats’ — main goal was to remove Trump from office:
Investigative journalist Sara Carter was interviewed, citing a tweet from former CIA director John O Brennan, who has been keen to get rid of Trump since 2016:
She called attention to his tweet from January 9:
Note the words ‘seeking national redemption’, ‘total denunciation of a despot’s legacy’ and ‘eradicate any remaining malignancy’.
Those are words I never expected to see in a communication from an American official.
Clouthub CEO Jeff Brain followed:
Speaking personally, Leo Terrell’s short segment was the best. He came right out and defended President Trump. I wish he had more time to speak:
The closing few minutes featured Lou Dobbs asking for short conclusions from everyone on the show:
In conclusion, the next four years could be very dangerous for the 74+-million people who supported President Trump.
Anyone doubting the possible peril can read John Brennan’s recent tweets:
Brennan reposted a video from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who looks really mean. Perhaps plastic surgery went wrong. He doesn’t look right, which doesn’t lend much credence to his argument against the president:
The next CIA director should be interesting:
Meanwhile, back at the Capitol building, members of the House of Representatives were struck by coronavirus. These seemed to be Republicans only:
The chief of the Capitol Police was dismissed last week. He warned about future security in the building:
A Massachusetts congressman objected to Trump’s award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to his friend, the Patriots’ (American football) coach Bill Belichick. Wow. Suddenly, everything Trump touches, so to speak, is tainted:
Belichick will not be accepting the award.
Jake Sherman reports for Punchbowl. He had a series of tweets about the Dems’ moves to impeach President Trump for a second time. It is rumoured that Nancy Pelosi could sit on this for months and try to impeach him after he leaves office. This is a first:
This creates a problem for Republicans. This is evidence that corporate America is cutting off funds to the Republican Party. I feel sorry for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California):
It gets worse. Democrats propose to not recognise any Republican who moved to question the Electoral College vote. That is not very democratic, is it?
Looking back to Epiphany, Wednesday, January 6, while the president’s rally progressed in various parts of Washington, DC, the first lady was busy with a photo shoot of White House furnishings. She also appeared to distance herself from the very public gathering:
Hmm.
Returning to the Dems and the president, here is a draft of the House impeachment resolutions. I can’t see this proceeding, especially on the grounds of ‘insurrection’. No one loves the United States more than President Trump:
The seasoned congressman Steny Hoyer is fully behind the impeachment motion:
I do not understand how a trial can begin ‘right away’. They have to get a whole committee lined up. Good grief.
That said:
It’s unclear whether the Department of Justice will go along with the Dems on claims that the president incited unrest. PJ Media reported:
A senior Justice Department official says there are no plans to indict Donald Trump or anyone else who spoke at a rally just before the Capitol building was breached by a pro-Trump mob.
Ken Kohl, a senior prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, said, “We don’t expect any charges of that nature.”
This will no doubt be enormously unsatisfying to Democrats who long to see Donald Trump do a perp walk into the federal courthouse.
Elsewhere in the nation’s capital, pro-Trump lobbyists are being shunned:
It’s worth remembering what happened last Wednesday into the early hours of Thursday. This is a concise summary from a commenter on the British political site Guido Fawkes (sorry, no permalinks available on his site):
Also, Trump’s public polling is unchanged, despite negative media coverage and his social media ban. The National Pulse reports:
Numbers from Rasmussen Reports show that following both of these events, his approval rating has shifted either one or two percentage points – exclusively trending upwards.
In conclusion:
In 2016, around the time of Trump’s election, I wrote that the Left — Democrats — were aping the Bolsheviks of the Russian Revolution.
I didn’t get much traction with that suggestion then.
What about now?
The announcement from President Trump’s campaign legal team from November 22 shocked many Sidney Powell supporters.
Many Trump and Powell supporters think that the US president’s case for election redress is sunk.
Here is what is happening. My post from Monday, November 23, offers background, including the Trump team’s announcement.
What Sidney Powell said
Sidney Powell issued her own statement afterwards. Her work is about ‘We the People’, as is L Lin Wood Jr’s.
Powell’s statement is as follows (emphasis in the original, those in purple mine):
I agree with the campaign’s statement that I am not part of the campaign’s legal team. I never signed a retainer agreement or sent the President or the campaign a bill for my expenses or fees.
My intent has always been to expose all the fraud I could find and let the chips fall where they may–whether it be upon Republicans or Democrats.
The evidence I’m compiling is overwhelming that this software tool was used to shift millions of votes from President Trump and other Republican candidates to Biden and other Democrat candidates. We are proceeding to prepare our lawsuit and plan to file it this week. It will be epic.
We will not allow this great Republic to be stolen by communists from without and within or our votes altered or manipulated by foreign actors in Hong Kong, Iran, Venezuela, or Serbia, for example, who have neither regard for human life nor the people who are the engine of this exceptional country.
#WeThePeople elected Donald Trump and other Republican candidates to restore the vision of America as a place of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
You may assist this effort by making a non tax-deductible contribution to www.DefendingTheRepublic.org. #KrakenOnSteroids”
Sidney Powell
What Trump’s campaign lawyers are working on and what Sidney Powell is perfecting are two different issues.
The Trump realm cannot easily enter the Powell realm because that would complicate things unnecessarily.
REX, whom I’ve quoted before, albeit not recently, has this analysis as to why there is a pincer movement going on:
This is also a useful analysis. I am unfamiliar with the author, but what he says makes sense:
Rush Limbaugh and Howie Carr want more action
On Monday, November 23, Rush Limbaugh was disappointed that nothing was happening yet from either Team Trump or Sidney Powell.
The Daily Caller carried portions of the transcript from his show (emphases mine):
“You call a gigantic press conference like that, one that lasts an hour. And you announce massive bombshells, then you better have some bombshells, there better be something at that press conference other than what we got,” he explained.
Limbaugh went on to say that a witness — even one whose identity was disguised — would have gone a long way toward bolstering the claims made by the president’s team.
“But you don’t — you can’t — I talked to so many people who were blown away by it, by the very nature of the press conference,” Limbaugh continued. “They promised blockbuster stuff, and then nothing happened. And that’s just, that’s not — well, it’s not good. If you’re going to promise blockbuster stuff like that, then there has — now, I understand. Look, I’m the one that’s been telling everybody, this stuff doesn’t happen at warp speed, light speed, the way cases are made for presentation in court. But if you’re going to do a press conference like that, with the promise of blockbusters, then — then there has to be something more than what that press conference delivered.”
Limbaugh concluded by saying that if the Trump team was going to make a case, it needed to be done quickly. “Time, of course is of the essence now, as it is speedily vanishing. So they’re going to have to act fast,” he said.
The Howie Carr Show, now a Newsmax programme, came on in the afternoon.
Howie couldn’t get hold of Sidney Powell for another interview, but he did speak with Boris Epshteyn and Joe diGenova. The next few paragraphs are my potted summary of what they told Howie.
Boris Epstein, part of Trump’s campaign legal team spoke to Howie. Epstein said ALL the states in question are still in play. He appeared during Howie’s Newsmax hour. (Howie wears a jacket and tie during that portion of his broadcast.)
Epstein said they are tracking things very closely and said he wanted to reassure Newsmax viewers that everything is in hand and progressing as planned.
Joe diGenova was on Howie Carr’s Newsmax hour after Boris Epshteyn. Joe diGenova said that there IS a two-pronged strategy in play. He said that Sidney Powell doesn’t have any problem pursuing the voting machines angle while Team Trump pursues what went on in the polling stations with no Republican observers admitted or placed so far away that they couldn’t see anything.
He confirmed what Boris Epshteyn said: ALL the questionable states were still in play that day (and this week).
Is President Trump worried about paying for recounts and/or audits in individual states? Based on 2016 and the four years of lefty turmoil that followed, his team were prepared and set money aside, especially as mail-in ballots were heavily promoted in all Democratic-controlled states or cities.
Trump knew his campaign would need to pay for recounts. That’s $3 – 7 million per state. They have that covered.
For those who think Trump should take Al Gore’s advice and concede, in 2000, when the hanging chad contest in Florida was in dispute, Gore didn’t concede until December.
But I digress.
Back to Howie Carr. As an organised crime reporter for the Boston Herald for many years, he knows how the legal system can be manipulated. On Monday’s show he asked whether Sidney Powell’s legal standing would be questioned. On whose behalf could she credibly make her case? (After all, L Lin Wood Jr’s case in Georgia got thrown out last week for lack of standing. He is going to appeal the decision.)
It turns out that Sidney Powell is a military lawyer. As today is still Thanksgiving Day, the ultimate American feast, here’s the retweet:
Now for the original tweet:
She has been representing Gen Michael Flynn.
She has also put the frighteners on certain people involved with the voting machines:
Patience required — more information emerging
An American Thinker article by Andrea Widburg puts the election legal fight into perspective:
Currently, I believe that this election was marked by epic fraud. You cannot convince me that Biden, who got five or six people to his rallies, as opposed to the 52,000 or so at Trump’s rallies in Pennsylvania, ended with more votes than Obama.
Nobody ever said proving this fraud would be easy (or, sadly, even possible). I’m treating its unfolding like an epic novel with a surprise ending …
So should the rest of us.
Imagine if we were on the legal team. We wouldn’t have time to sleep — or contemplate our annual turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
For Team Trump, there is much to challenge. RedState has an article with dizzying detail about Georgia alone.
There are also these items:
Yet another witness has come out in Michigan, describing the same scenario as in Georgia:
This is in addition to the legal challenges going on not only in these states but a handful of others which produced dubious results.
As for Sidney Powell, more information emerges for her, including this:
I really hope this isn’t true (a must see/read thread about Republicans and the voting machines).
Conclusion
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is:
Prayers continue for everyone involved in this historic battle for the future of the Great Republic.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers …
… wherever you might be experiencing lockdown.
I wish all of you a good day, however different it might be in 2020.
Lately, I’ve been watching Howie Carr every weekday on YouTube to find out how the election results are going.
Even now, Joe Biden is not yet president-elect. For the media, he is more like the president-select (all credit to Howie).
President Trump still occupies that spot, at least until January 2021, at least.
As I wrote this post, he rightly had a go at General ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis:
He highlighted Wisconsin’s suspicious election results …
… and pointed out a fact about the 27 House races that notional experts said Republicans would lose. Republicans won all 27:
He rightly celebrated the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching 30,000 for the first time in history. Never let it be said that this was Joe Biden’s doing. It was Donald Trump’s policies that made this beautiful record landmark possible.
This is the ninth stock market record in 2020 and the 48th of the Trump administration:
President Trump pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey, a tradition that began in the 1860s during Abraham Lincoln’s administration when his son made friends with a turkey the Lincolns were planning to eat for Thanksgiving.
This year, a beautiful bird, Corn, came from Ames, Iowa, with his friend Cob — Corn and Cob, corncob — for the ceremony. They returned to Ames afterwards with the farmer who bred them:
Now back to Howie Carr, who also covers the latest coronavirus news on a daily basis.
Pity Americans who have to put up with Dr Anthony Fauci. Even Britons roll their eyes at his advice.
A disgusted English friend of mine scorned Fauci’s ‘don’t kill Granny’ advice. I shook my head at ‘a quarter of a million deaths’, which were revised downward drastically during the summer as being deaths with COVID and not of COVID. There’s a big difference:
Back to the ‘killing Granny’ narrative — this is the other side of the story for many elderly with younger family members:
Too right.
Here’s another choice morsel from Fauci:
I would love to know what Fauci is doing for Thanksgiving, but he doesn’t have a Twitter account and it is too painful listening to his idiocy.
As I write on Tuesday, Howie has been reading out the American resistance to lockdowns and restrictions from news articles. These detail how the great and the good have been dictating, sometimes under penalty of law, how people like you and me should live our lives with an illness that has the same fatality rates as the flu. Note that this does not mean coronavirus is synonymous with flu.
Never mind Fauci. American governors have become more brazen and authoritarian with every passing day, no more so than at one of the sacrosanct, inviolable national holidays: Thanksgiving Day, which is celebrated this year on Thursday, November 26.
Let us make the rounds, coast to coast, to see what these governors have been doing, starting on what used to be known as the Eastern seaboard.
Massachusetts
Republican — actually, RINO — governor Charlie Baker (Joe Biden calls him Charlie Parker) has been issuing various prohibitions for ages.
This is his advice to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (as it is officially known) for Thanksgiving, the kick-off to the holiday season, which ends in the US on New Year’s Day. I enjoyed the response to Baker’s advice — well said:
New York
Let’s move somewhat south to New York State.
Howie Carr plays the best clips of Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo’s monologues sound as if they are clips from horror movies until Howie says that they’re the governor’s pronouncements. Scary.
I don’t have any of those audio clips, but Cuomo’s tweets about Thanksgiving are unintentionally amusing.
Before I go there, however, let’s look back to the beginning of the month, two days before the election on Tuesday, November 3.
There was a massive Trump car rally on the bridge named for his father, Mario Cuomo.
As far as I am concerned, the Governor Mario M Cuomo Bridge will always be the TAPPAN ZEE BRIDGE.
This was held in the rain. I embraced the enthusiasm and wished I could have been there:
The current Gov Cuomo, a Dem, as was his father, does not like the fact that President Trump has been able to announce two coronavirus vaccines:
On Friday, November 20, a group of business owners in Buffalo, upstate near Canada, told sheriffs and one or more notional health inspectors to get lost.
Gateway Pundit reported, in part, that the business owners were in a gym. Gyms are/were currently closed because of the Chi-vi (emphases mine below):
Business owners in Buffalo, New York fed up with Cuomo’s authoritarian Covid lockdown orders asserted their Constitutional rights and kicked out sheriffs and “health inspectors” on Friday night.
50 business owners gathered inside of a shuttered gym in Buffalo, New York Friday night when two sheriffs and a so-called ‘health inspector’ showed up to harass the group in response to an “anonymous tip.”
The business owners shouted down and kicked out the health inspector and the told the sheriffs to come back with a warrant.
Well done!
The story comes from the Buffalo News.
This brings us to Thanksgiving.
Cuomo warned New Yorkers to stay at home within their own households, so much so that the New York Post reported that there are big window decals with a photo of Cuomo snooping in people’s homes, accompanied by an image of a turkey.
Interestingly, the company that makes the decals is also located in Buffalo:
One upstate company wants Gov. Andrew Cuomo to be the biggest turkey at your Thanksgiving dinner this year.
The Buffalo-based design firm Custom 716 is selling stickers of the governor’s face that can be put on a window to make it look like Cuomo is peering inside — presumably to make sure not too many people are there to celebrate the holiday this year.
The sticker is a clear way of ripping Cuomo for demanding that New York families avoid gathering in large groups for the holiday out of fears of spreading COVID-19.
“Great for all gatherings, sure to get laughs, great for your business or your home!” they write about the $10 sticker on their firm’s website.
“$10 and I will mail it to you for free, or pick up is available. Located in North Tonawanda, NY,” the description reads, offering a promo code allowing customers to bypass the $8.05 shipping and handling fee.
Cuomo has been begging New Yorkers to spend Turkey Day alone, warning the coronavirus’s rapid spread has increased in part thanks to small, indoor gatherings in recent months as the weather has turned slightly chillier.
“It’s your family, it’s your home, it’s your table — these are all environments where you feel safe and that’s the beauty of Thanksgiving,” he said during a phone conference briefing with reporters Thursday.
“Your safe zone is not a safe zone, your safe zone is dangerous this year.”
When you hear the audio of him saying that (thanks to Howie), it sends chills down the spine.
Fortunately:
politicians and law enforcement agents across the state … argue it’s nearly impossible to enforce caps on indoor, private gatherings.
At the time, Cuomo included himself in that diktat:
However, a few days later, Andrew Cuomo announced big plans for a family get together. Hmm, interesting:
Here’s a tweet, including a photo of the snoop decal from Buffalo. Note the ‘for thee, but not for me’ response from someone living in Governor Pritzker’s fiefdom of Illinois (see below):
Howie Carr said on Tuesday, November 24 that Cuomo got so much blow back from New Yorkers that his family’s plans for a communal turkey dinner changed. One of his daughters would not be attending (H/T Gateway Pundit):
Aww.
Also:
His daughter, wearing a tee shirt with ‘New York tough’ emblazoned across it, tweeted:
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo abruptly canceled his Thanksgiving plans Monday, less than two hours after revealing he planned to spend the holiday with his mother and two of his daughters.
During a radio interview Monday around 3:45 p.m., Cuomo revealed his “current plan” for the holiday: His 89-year-old mother, Matilda, and two of his three daughters, Michaela and Cara, are planning on joining him in Albany.
…By 5:30 p.m., Cuomo nixed the gathering entirely.
Good.
Hypocrisy is most unbecoming.
New Jersey
Just west of New York, across the Hudson River, New Jersey’s governor Phil Murphy was accosted by angry diners when he was eating out with his family and appearing without a mask. New Jersey has had a particularly arduous lockdown.
Remember, Phil Murphy won’t have to worry about where his next meal is coming from. The taxpayers are footing his bill:
Murphy, who, Howie Carr says, attended the same high school and college as Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker, is still trying to frighten his state’s residents:
His wife is at it, too:
I couldn’t agree more about the gaslighting.
North Carolina
Moving several hundred miles south, North Carolina’s Governor Roy Cooper approves of business closures in Greensboro:
On Monday, November 23, he issued a Thanksgiving sermonette on the ‘stay at home’ theme, most of which follows. Like the UK, he has a colour-based ‘tier’ designation:
With that sort of warning, what North Carolina resident could possibly want to go through with (gasp) a family or friend oriented Thanksgiving dinner?
Amazingly, people in North Carolina have not been able to attend church — or any sort of celebration — for nine months. He has the nerve to tell them to keep it up ‘just a bit longer’ — for November 2021. Good grief:
Governor Cooper has even better news for the run-up to Christmas:
Excellent response.
Illinois
Let’s travel around 1,000 miles northwest to Illinois.
Governor JB Pritzker comes from a family of real estate moguls. As one would expect, he can escape Illinois, lovely as it is, to take a break at family properties elsewhere.
Last summer, he defied his own executive order to take part in a protest in Chicago. Pritzker is the man in the blue and white checked shirt in the second photo below:
More recently, Howie Carr said that Pritzker’s immediate family have been spotted at their Florida farm which has horses that his children can ride. Howie, now a Florida resident, lives in the vicinity.
Hmm.
A Republican congressman from Illinois called out Pritzker:
Someone replied:
Fortunately, Pritzker’s and Illinois’s directives, such as these …
… are being ignored. Just look at Chicago’s O’Hare airport:
Well done!
Gee, 20 years on, the TSA still have their checkpoint. Why didn’t President Trump ever repeal the Patriot Act? ‘There’s a there there’, no doubt.
For those Illinois residents who will not be travelling for Thanksgiving, there is no absolution if you live in Chicago. On November 15, a spokeswoman from Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office said, ‘You are the problem; you are putting everyone at risk’ (see the 11-second mark):
Yet, anecdotally, the vast majority of Chicagoans are wearing masks:
Speaking of masks:
Chicago — the Windy City — which is also darned chilly at this time of year, is pushing OUTDOOR dining in a TWO-sided tent!
You could not make this advice up:
As for Thanksgiving dinners, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has cancelled them. She is pictured in the photo above with Governor Pritzker at a June 2020 protest. Note that CNN has not shown the official US COVID-19 death count, which is still at ‘with’ + ‘of’, as it was last summer:
Interestingly, during lockdown in April, Madame Mayor felt compelled to get her hair cut when she had told ordinary Chicagoans that hairdressing was non-essential. See the Daily Mail report from April 12, complete with photo of her with her hairdresser, no social distancing required.
Washington
Let’s leave the Midwest for the West Coast, starting in the most northern state, Washington, home to Seattle, the site of much summer mayhem.
Governor Jay Inslee, who did not oppose said summer mayhem, is now telling Washington residents not to get together for Thanksgiving. This advert is unbelievable:
COVID-19 can find you everywhere! Woo-oo!
Inslee thanks Washington residents for not celebrating one of America’s two most historic holidays this year. The reply is excellent:
Oregon
The state immediately south of Washington is Oregon.
There Governor Kate Brown is all in for the deadly coronavirus narrative, especially at Thanksgiving:
On Monday, November 23, she asked for Oregonians to snitch on each other at Thanksgiving.
Hot Air has the story, first reported in the Washington Times. Reporter Jazz Shaw says:
I guess nobody told Oregon Governor Kate Brown about the old rule regarding snitches and stitches. With the holidays fast approaching and an increasing number of citizens growing tired of government mandates forbidding them from gathering with friends and family to celebrate, Brown is concerned that people may simply ignore her orders and gather around the feast table anyway. So what’s an autocratic executive to do? The answer is as simple as pumpkin pie. She’d like people to keep an eye out for large gatherings in their neighborhood and call the police if they see any suspiciously large, turkey-related activity going on. That’s an idea that’s sure to put everyone in the holiday spirit, right? (Washington Times)
This must be one of the snottiest adverts about family ever made. See what you think. A photo of the governor follows (she’s not the one with the pink gloves):
Let us not forget that Portland has had mayhem going on since June. Every doggone night for months on end:
California
The most blatant nose-thumbing has come from California’s governor Gavin Newsom, who with the co-operation of mayors and county officials has kept the Golden State under lockdown for most of the year, with most counties at the top two highest tier levels during that time.
The status holds true, if not worse, even now:
Meanwhile, Governor Newsom has been releasing prisoners sporadically because they are in danger of catching COVID-19. Forget about law-abiding citizens:
One used to think California voters were being silly in continuing to vote in Democrats.
However, in recent years, a growing number of Americans think that Democrats have won so many elections because of voter fraud:
With regard to the curfew, at least one protest took place. This is from Huntington Beach:
Protests last summer in the state were acceptable to most, but the anti-lockdown and anti-curfew ones attract comment. Fortunately, some can discern the truth:
Newsom has seemingly bought into the mask narrative, even though that policy has not improved his state’s figures:
Exactly. Probably more adjusted statistics. We have them in the UK, too.
However, right now, more Californians are interested in Newsom’s social life during lockdown:
With regard to masks …
No one cares that the Newsom family is self-isolating for a fortnight:
The tweets kept coming and coming:
Newsom isn’t alone, it seems, in rule breaking. Is this the California state legislature? Yes, it is:
By the way, masks are probably not a good conversational topic for Thanksgiving. See this brief exchange:
But I digress.
The three-star French Laundry in Yountville (Napa Valley) is one of the world’s most famous restaurants.
In the 1920s, it was used as a French steam laundry, hence the name.
In the 1970s, the then-mayor of Yountville Don Schmitt and his wife Sally turned the building into a restaurant.
In 1994, the French chef Thomas Keller bought the restaurant and made it into the legend it is today.
Friends invited Gavin Newsom to the French Laundry for a birthday celebration on November 6 during California’s lockdown.
Talk about ‘for me, but not for thee’.
The Daily Caller reported:
Photos show the maskless governor of California dining indoors at one of the highest rated restaurants in the world despite his restrictive coronavirus guidelines for the citizens of California.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom can be seen dining at the Michelin-starred French Laundry on the evening of November 6, according to photos obtained by Fox LA. The restaurant, located in California’s Napa Valley, is considered “the pinnacle of California dining” and has been ranked the best restaurant in the world numerous times, according to various outlets.
Newsom has said the restaurant was outdoors, but FoxLA reported that the room’s glass sliding doors had been closed, making the dinner party indoors. Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The group was so loud that customers complained:
“While we were there we realized there was a very loud party going on in a room 20 feet from us,” the woman who took the photos told FoxLA. “It was a bit annoying since you’re spending hard-earned money to go there. It got louder and louder and so they had some sliding glass doors that they were able to close, so then it was a closed-off room but you could still hear them with how loud they were.”
She continued: “I just happened to look over and realize hey is that Gavin Newsom, who is that? And I did ask one of the waitresses and she confirmed it was, so I was able to take a couple of photos, I was able to document this especially since nobody was wearing a mask. It was a very large group of people shoulder to shoulder, something that he’s always telling us not to do so yeah it was a bit annoying for sure.”
Newsom has urged California residents to wear face masks “in between bites” at restaurants and announced Monday that California is “pulling an emergency brake” and mandating the most restrictive tier of coronavirus restrictions for more than two dozen California counties …
The governor also warned that he would announce more COVID restrictions Friday ahead of Thanksgiving.
Newsom apologized Tuesday for attending the dinner party, calling it a “bad mistake” and saying that he became uncomfortable after arriving when he realized that the group was larger than he expected, according to FoxLA.
…
But the woman who took the photos said Newsom did not appear uncomfortable.
“I was surprised because it didn’t look like he was uncomfortable being there until the very end until people were looking at him and staring at him as he was leaving the room,” she told FoxLA.
Not surprisingly, the dinner made a splash in California’s media:
A few days ago, the California IBank had the nerve to tweet this. I applaud the reply:
That is so true.
Words fail me.
On Thanksgiving, when in doubt, eat more and add more butter.
I hope that those celebrating Thanksgiving can enjoy their dinner the best they can — with hearty gratitude. (Things could always be worse.)
The results for the 2020 US presidential election have never been so confusing.
In 2000, when Al Gore ran against George W Bush, life was so much simpler: Florida was the only state where the results were in dispute. Those were the days of the hanging chads.
On Tuesday evening (US time), November 10, I checked election maps in the Telegraph and at Real Clear Politics. The Telegraph had Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes, going to Biden. Real Clear Politics, based in the US, had the state undeclared.
At the time I checked both maps, People’s Pundit Daily tweeted:
Neither map had this result posted.
Additionally, I could not find where North Carolina’s State Board of Elections called the result.
Even so, Thom Tillis’s opponent conceded that day:
There are two more maps I looked at that night (as it was in my time zone) — People’s Pundit Daily‘s and the one at Power Elections:
Note that, on the night of November 10, the Power Elections map was showing Wisconsin and Minnesota still undecided — along with Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, People’s Pundit Daily showed only Arizona and Georgia still in play.
As far as electoral votes go, Power Elections had Biden up by one. People’s Pundit Daily had Biden up by 50 (279-229).
I’m not blaming any of these outlets for confusing the issue, but, until this year, maps were pretty well unified after the election.
Rudy Giuliani, incidentally, seemed satisfied that Real Clear Politics changed their result for Pennsylvania (note Twitter’s response):
Just as bad is this — the coronavirus crisis:
So, what happens when an election result is in dispute across the nation?
A. S. Haley, better known online as Anglican Curmudgeon, explained what the constitutional course of action is in his November 8 post, ‘Down to the Brass Tacks’.
My fellow churchman wrote an excellent article. A big tip of the hat goes to another fellow churchman, Underground Pewster, for the link.
Excerpts follow. Emphases mine, except where noted otherwise.
First of all, for my readers who are not American, please note (emphases in purple mine):
… the rush to “call” a winner of the 2020 election has been driven by the major news networks, who are unanimously biased against President Trump. But the media have no power under the Constitution to declare anyone as “President-Elect”. That title may be bestowed only upon the winner in the Electoral College vote of December 18, or if not there, then upon the candidate selected by the new House of Representatives that convenes on January 3, 2021.
The Electoral College will meet on December 14 and the results will be available on December 18.
The US Constitution and pursuant Congressional statutes make the following provisions:
By Congressional statute (3 U.S.C. § 7), enacted pursuant to Article II, Sec. 1, cl. 5 of the Constitution, the Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a given Presidential election year has been specified as the date on which all State electors are to meet in their respective State capitals and cast their ballots for both President and Vice President. In 2020, that date falls on December 14.
Normally, the electors for any given State are those persons who (first) have been nominated beforehand by a registered political party or independent candidate within that State (or Congressional district), and then (second) who have the fortune to have their Presidential candidate receive the highest number of votes cast in that State (or district) in the November election. But when is it determined that a given Presidential candidate has received the requisite highest number of votes?
Ay, there’s the rub. Again normally, the vote tallies in the various counties and districts of the State are completed within a day or two of Election Day, and are clear enough so that there can be no dispute about which candidate got the most votes. But occasionally, as happened in the Presidential election of 1876, and as almost happened in the Presidential election of 2000, there were disputes about which candidate prevailed in various States, so that the slate of electors entitled to cast votes for their respective candidate was rendered uncertain. The Constitution specifies that in such cases, as well as in any case where no candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College votes, the final selection of the President goes to the newly elected US House of Representatives, and the selection of the Vice President goes to the newly elected Senate.
That last sentence is very interesting. If Nancy Pelosi remains Speaker of the House presiding over a Democrat majority, Biden would be president. Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, and the Republican majority could select a Republican VP. Talk about fireworks.
A S Haley compares and contrasts 2020 with 2000:
As regards the election results in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, we are witnessing a repeat of what happened in Florida in 2000. You may recall that the then Democratic Party candidate Al Gore contested the official count in certain counties of that State in favor of the Republican Party’s George W. Bush. Gore, however, was under a deadline to have the recounts he requested resolved in his favor before the Florida Secretary of State certified the official count to the Governor, who would then sign the certificates attesting selection of the Republican slate of electors to the Electoral College.
Again, Congress has legislated what happens when there is a dispute in any given State over its proper slate of electors. Section 5 of Title 3, U. S. Code, provides that if election results are contested in any state, and if the state, prior to election day, has enacted “procedures to settle controversies or contests over electors and electoral votes”, and if these procedures have been applied, and the results have been determined six days before the electors’ meetings, then these results are considered to be conclusive. Six days before the prescribed meeting of the Electoral College on December 14 of this year falls on December 8. (The date is referred to as “Safe Harbor Day”, because the statute makes any resolution of election disputes reached by that date presumptively conclusive, i.e., not subject to further contest.)
Therefore, the contested results need to be ‘resolved’ by December 8. However, even then, there is a provision when they are not:
Here again, however, the federal nature of our Union kicks in. For while it probably will not be practical to have all contests in all disputed States determined in the courts by December 8, it may suffice for one such dispute to have been finally determined at the highest possible level by that date, if that determination is definitively made by the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS), and if it fairly applies in the other cases, as well. That is because, under our federal system, the rulings of SCOTUS on federal law are automatically binding on all lower courts, both federal and State.
I learned this years ago in US History class, at least twice, but never imagined that this fateful day might come to pass in my lifetime. It seemed so hypothetical decades ago. Today, in November 2020, we could be at that point.
The biggest issue revolves around Pennsylvania (20 Electoral College votes) during a year of coronavirus. Pennsylvania encouraged voters to use postal votes instead of appearing in person to vote this year. The Republican Party of Pennsylvania has brought a case against the secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar:
… which challenges the decision by a unanimous Pennsylvania Supreme Court to (1) extend the statutory deadline for receipt of all mail-in and personal ballots by three days after the legislated deadline of 8 p.m. on November 3; and (2) require the various election boards to include in their counts any ballots received by the extended deadline which could not definitively be shown to have been mailed after November 3 (i.e., ballots in envelopes bearing blurred postmarks, or even no postmarks at all). This ruling, be it noted, shifted the burden of proof from the individual voter to the given elections board to establish that a ballot was not sent in by the statutory deadline — and why would a Democratic-majority elections board try to prove that a ballot for their candidate had not been sent in on time?
Supreme Court Justice Alito issued an order requiring that the Pennsylvania ballots arriving after Election Day be segregated apart from those that arrived on time:
pending action on the petition for review by the full court.
Haley says that the Supreme Court could issue further orders in the days to come.
Can the Supreme Court help Trump? Haley says that things could become quite technical legally. The result could go either way:
Here is one very strong summary of the issues for the Republican petitioners, and here is another informed view that calls into question whether SCOTUS will grant any definitive relief. In the words of my previous post, “you pays your money and you takes your choice.”
As for the Electoral College, this is how electors are chosen:
Here is the language of Article II, Section 1, clause 2, which has been with us since the original document was ratified in 1789 (with my bold emphasis added):
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Thus if the various State and federal courts prove inadequate to the task of resolving the election disputes in each contested State before the Safe Harbor day of December 8, the Legislatures of those States are empowered to step in and resolve the disputes by designating their own slates of electors. And it has not gone unnoticed that of the disputed States (Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada), all but Georgia have Democratic governors, as well as Democratic Secretaries of State, and Democratic election officials, while they each (except for Nevada) have legislatures in which both houses have Republican majorities.
However, will the states have the nerve to:
exercise their Constitutional power to resolve those disputes definitively, in time for the final vote of electors by December 14? On the answer to that question depends who will be President on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.
Haley rightly blames this year’s election chaos on the Democrats for their notional coronavirus concern with mail-in ballots.
If the lawsuits against individual states and the Supreme Court come to nothing in resolving the election result, then Americans have only the House of Representatives — congressmen and women — left.
There is a chance that Republicans could still control the House of Representatives:
If the vote does go to the new House of Representatives:
the vote for President will not be by a majority of its individual members, but (again as specified in the Twelfth Amendment) by the collective delegations for each State in the House, with each delegation having a single vote. As of the latest results for the 435 House elections, Republicans on January 3 will control 26 of the State delegations, and will thus have a majority of the 50 delegations so voting.
In conclusion:
what happens between now and January 20, 2021 is pretty much up to the Republican legislators elected to Congress and to their various State legislatures.
Let us hope for the best.
Below is Episode 10 of Spectator TV’s The Week in 60 Minutes, broadcast on Thursday, November 5, 2020:
As per their YouTube blurb, Andrew Neil’s special guests are:
David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge [and] Ece Temelkuran, a Turkish journalist who was fired from her publication for criticising the government.
Andrew Neil began with the US election. Neil clearly loathes Trump. This is why I have not listened to or posted the previous two broadcasts.
He did mention that the state legislatures have a big part to play in deciding whether their election counts are legal or if they can take other action. Political Editor James Forsyth said this was not the predicted Blue Wave Democrats and pollsters predicted. As such, the Republican-dominated Senate will put a check on how much Biden, should he become president, could do.
Economics Correspondent Kate Andrews, who is American, said that to Trump supporters, the incumbent represents ‘normality’. She is not a Trump fan, by the way. She said that Trump will not go down without a fight in the courts, especially after the Democrats have dogged him since 2015. She also pointed out how wrong the polls were.
Neil said that the Democrats never seem to learn their lessons, beginning with Hillary Clinton in 2016. He also said that Biden made a mistake in offering a huge concert featuring Lady Gaga; it looked to ‘Flyover Country’ as if he were pandering to multi-millionaires.
Forsyth pointed out that there is still deep division in the way that Americans think. Neil mentioned the upcoming litigation from Team Trump and mentioned voter fraud, including mail-in ballots. Forsyth said that Establishment Republicans, e.g. Mitch McConnell, will not want him to move into the territory of ‘vexatious lawsuits’.
Neil noted that Democrats are hardly triumphant, particularly because of Biden’s age: 78. Kate Andrews replied that their mandate will be unclear for a one-term president. [They are both assuming Joe’s going to last for four years.] She disagreed with Forsyth about coronavirus being the reason Trump didn’t get more votes; she thinks that Trump came on too strong in the first debate. [The presidential debates are supposed to sway the undecided.]
Andrews think that Biden will ‘work across the aisle’ if he becomes president. However, she says there’s a long road ahead before the president is decided.
Forsyth says that chances are good that Republicans will continue ‘Trumpism without Trump’, building more links with the working class and those on lower incomes. He thinks Democrats have more work to do here than Republicans.
Neil said that the Midwest could take the coastal areas over as the deciding region in future elections — for both parties. Andrews said that people there really appreciated the 2017 tax breaks. The economy, from what she has seen in exit poll issues, was much more important than coronavirus.
Neil said that if Biden becomes president, he will face a Republican-controlled Senate and a majority-conservative Supreme Court. [Neil and Andrews haven’t allowed for him to stack the Supreme Court.]
At that point, both Neil and Forsyth started showing their vulnerabilities as pundits on US politics. So, I’ll move on to the next topic.
The next topic of discussion was the second coronavirus lockdown in England, paralleling the one in Wales and something similar in Scotland. It started the day of the broadcast.
The Spectator‘s editor, Fraser Nelson, talked about the ‘debacle’ of spurious data from SAGE that appeared at the press conference on Saturday, October 31, which 15 million people watched. He pointed out that there are nowhere near 4,000 daily deaths from coronavirus. The magazine has been tracking the data daily.
Nelson also mentioned Sir Patrick Vallance’s exaggerated projections from September, which were not at all true. Nelson said that it looks — even before lockdown — as if the Government’s localised tier system is working. Liverpool’s case numbers decreased by 48%, he said, in the second half of October. He concludes that the Government pushed lockdown based on modelling rather than reality, i.e. ‘scary charts’. [I couldn’t agree more.]
Prof David Spiegelhalter appeared remotely. Neil asked him about these strange statistics and scary scenarios. Spiegelhalter, a statistician, said that he would be speaking personally, not professionally. He said that the ‘4,000 deaths’ were ‘completely unnecessary’ to make a case for a second lockdown. He pointed out that, in more moderate areas of the country, e.g. the south-West, cases are going up. He said that, even as R is decreasing, we are only stabilising the situation temporarily. The situation we are in now is still putting pressure on the NHS to carry out routine treatments. That could have been explained and that would have been reason enough for the public to accept a second lockdown.
Nelson broke in to say that he thought showing alarmist statistics to an early evening audience nationwide on a Saturday was irresponsible. Spiegelhalter agreed, saying that the graph was ‘inappropriate’. He added that it had been produced under earlier, out-of-date assumptions — and was never part of an official document.
Nelson asked for a more balanced view with regard to public statistics. He was also concerned about false-positive test results. Spiegelhalter replied that the true false-positive result is very low. However, we are moving on from the PCR (swab) test we have been using. [A trial with a new test in Liverpool started a few days ago.] He said that the new tests would need to be further evaluated for false-positive rates.
Neil has been talking to the True Blue (Conservative) faithful and they have been growing increasingly ‘hostile’ towards Boris Johnson’s premiership. James Forsyth said there could be a vote on a third lockdown later in the winter. He predicted that there would be an even bigger Conservative backbench rebellion than there was on Wednesday, November 4, when the new lockdown was voted in. Andrews said that the public have not seen enough done during the summer to prevent a further coronavirus crisis. They are also edgy and frustrated about an ever-extended furlough scheme, recently extended to the end of March 2021.
Talk then turned to the ongoing disagreement between France and Turkey, which saw two terrorist incidents in France recently. Ece Temelkuran, an award-winning Turkish journalist and author, was the final interviewee. Neil asked her if Turkey’s President Erdogan was an ‘authoritarian’. She replied, ‘Definitely’. However, she added that the move away from secularism started in the 1980s with members of the military and went on from there. She explained that part of that move was against the Cold War. After the Berlin Wall fell, the military leaders were ‘jobless’ and looked for something with which they could occupy their time. Twenty years ago, after 9/11, Turkey became the ‘model, the exemplar country’ for ‘moderate Islam’, which emerged after 2001, and became stronger advocates for the cause.
She does not think that Erdogan has a plan, that he merely wants power. She says that Erdogan perceives — along with some Turks — that the ‘West has lost its moral superiority’ with the refugee crisis that began in 2015.
She said that Erdogan is increasing his control over various Turkish institutions, ongoing over the past four years. She said that things will get worse before they get better.
Charles Stanley Wealth Managers sponsored the programme.
The irony is that it was Antifa creating the spectacle of violence, Antifa, you remember, whom the corrupt fraudster called “just an idea”, and who on this occasion wore Trump fancy dress. The police escorted them into the heart of the Capital and then let them into the building. The Left, including our broadcasters, are now saying there was no security on the door because the Trump people were trusted, because they were “white” – actually no, Trump people are everything, but the left never lose an opportunity to stoke up hatred against people of European descent.
If Antifa hadn’t “stormed” the Capitol, the debate would have proceeded and we would all have heard a bit of the mountains of evidence the courts have refused to look at. Then Pence might have felt constrained to accede to the request of the defrauded states to be allowed to review their results in the light of further evidence. The Left could not risk that. But why would any Trump person want to stop the proceedings which were the first and last chance to hear some of the evidence? As it was, the weak Republicans were turned and Biden was endorsed in secret at dead of night.