If America dies, it’ll be in a MURDER-SUICIDE
An inside job by a gang of string-puppets who no longer care if it survives or not.
[PLEASE NOTE: Any bold emphasis within a blockquote, you should assume, is probably mine.]
THE ORIGINAL PINOCCHIO ... was first conceived by Carlo Collodi in 1881 as a tragic figure -- noDisneyesque charmer with a cricket for a conscience, but somewhat of an obnoxious, habitually-lying jerk who wore ugly outfits and a traffic-cone for a hat, and whose life ends in his execution! (Drawing: Enrico Mazzanti in 1883, via Wikipedia / Public Domain)
“THEY INCLUDE CANDIDATES FOR THE U.S. HOUSE AND SENATE, AND THE STATE OFFICES OF GOVERNOR, SECRETARY OF STATE AND ATTORNEY GENERAL -- MANY WITH CLEAR SHOTS TO VICTORY
... and some without a chance. They are united by at least one issue: They have all expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. And they are the new normal of the Republican Party.”
So began The New York Times story about our upcoming elections, “Over 370 Republican Candidates Have Cast Doubt on the 2020 Election”, that hit the streets last Thursday.
Doesn’t everybody know by now that neither Donald Trump nor any of his disciples has shown us any reliable evidence proving he won in 2020?
One might think it would be in Trump’s interest to do that, but maybe that would only be true if he had anything to show.
So if he won’t do it, I decided I myself will!
Most of my look-ups this week are just the usual information you’d know if you followed the boring normal-media that I keep thinking most normal Americans do (although I may be wrong about that.) But if that is not you?
You may want to keep reading anyway, just in case you’re wondering what you’ve been missing.
But, of course, not everyone who sees “irregularities” in the 2020 elections is being insincere. Back in June, David Siders of POLITICO Nightly talked about why some people actually believe it:
Researchers at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin interviewed 56 people who believed, falsely, that Trump most likely won the 2020 election. ...
These people do not exist in “tightly sealed, right-wing echo chambers,” and a majority “did not seem to subscribe to multiple conspiracy theories.”
Instead, “It appears that election night visuals were particularly powerful in cueing some people’s suspicions,” says the paper, written by Talia Stroud, a professor of communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Caroline Murray, a senior research associate at the university’s Center for Media Engagement, and Marley Duchovnay, a research associate there.
His portrayal of himself as a victim of the news media helped feed the idea that “actors on the left would go to extreme and illegal lengths to see that he was out of office,” according to the researchers.
And the rally sizes that Trump cared so much about? They made a difference in how people viewed the outcome, too. Some people who believed Trump won had a hard time reconciling his large crowds with his losing vote total.
But there was another factor that had nothing to do with Trump: how the lead on election night shifted from Trump to Joe Biden in some states as more ballots came in. Even though such shifts were expected — and explained by many traditional news outlets — the visuals on TV were difficult to overcome.
When asked why they thought the election lie was so effective, Stroud thought it was because “So many elite figures are making this claim that it adds perceived legitimacy that the election actually was stolen”, while Murray thought the pandemic and other factors that year had an effect: “The newness and the unique circumstances that were present in 2020 did really open the door for people to be suspicious.”
There was a similar study, conducted by Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand, just days after the election results were announced, then published by Harvard’s Kennedy School a month later — but before Trump’s legal challenges were decided — in which the majority of the study’s Trump voters, although knowledgeable followers of election news, thought Trump won:
We find that a majority of Trump voters in our sample – particularly those who were more politically knowledgeable and more closely following election news – falsely believed that election fraud was widespread, and that Trump won the election. Thus, false beliefs about the election are not merely a fringe phenomenon.
We also find that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a majority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, although 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless.
Another finding, by the way, was that, “Despite a lack of any meaningful evidence of systemic election fraud, a majority of Trump voters believed that fraud is common in U.S. elections (>77%) ...”, while Biden voters did not:
TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS, ... we live in ... two different worlds! (Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy)
WHILE WE MAY NOT THINK OF DONALD TRUMP AS AN ACTUAL“GENIUS”, HE DID INTRODUCE TO AN UNSUSPECTING AMERICA A BRILLIANT NEW POLITICAL TACTIC, DESIGNED TO PLAY INTO HIS FELLOW REPUBLICANS’ PRE-EXISTING SUSPICION OF ELECTIONS IN AMERICA,
... which is to set the groundwork beforehand for his later accusations of election-rigging, just to cover all his bases for an election he just might not win.
First, a foreshadowing of his intentions in 2016:
Here he is, at a Republican Primary Debate in 2015, after the Fox News moderator asked candidates to raise their hand if they will NOT pledge to back the GOP’s 2016 nominee, and if he loses, to then NOT run as an independent.
AS ALWAYS, THE ODD MAN OUT ... Donald Trump (center, with hand raised) in the first GOP debate of the 2016 election cycle, on August 6th, 2015. (Fox News via CNN.com)
Throughout that 2016 campaign, Trump would mysteriously complain, based on mostly nothing, that the election was “rigged”. Here he is in 2016, doing that:
“If the election is rigged, I would not be surprised,” he told The Washington Post in an interview ... “We may have people vote 10 times.” ... in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, he beseeched Republicans to start “watching closely” or the election will be “taken away from us” through fraud.
As luck would have it, he won anyway, rigged or not.
But along comes 2020, and he was back at it:
On July 19, in an interview aired on Fox News, Trump called the network's poll showing Biden leading by 8% "fake", further saying he would "have to see" if he would accept a loss in the election, citing postal voting as a way it would be rigged against him.
But then, published just days before the election, “Scoop: Trump's plan to declare premature victory”, from Jonathan Swan of AXIOS:
President Trump has told confidants he'll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he's "ahead," according to three sources familiar with his private comments.
That's even if the Electoral College outcome still hinges on large numbers of uncounted votes in key states like Pennsylvania. ...
Behind the scenes: Trump has privately talked through this scenario in some detail in the last few weeks, describing plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare he has won.
AND THEN, ACCORDING TO YAHOO, ON ELECTION NIGHT:
As the votes were still being counted on Nov. 3, 2020, Trump held a rally in New York City, where he asserted without evidence that he had defeated Joe Biden.
“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump declared on election night, adding, “We want all voting to stop.”
LAST THURSDAY, THE JANUARY 6TH COMMITTEE REPORTED THAT HE HAD DECIDED MONTHS BEFORE TO CLAIM THIS.
“We now know more about President Trump’s intention for election night. The evidence shows his false victory speech was planned well in advance, before any votes had been counted,” [Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.,] said. “It was a premeditated plan by the president to declare victory no matter what the actual result was. He made a plan to stay in office before Election Day.” ...
“In the course of our investigation, we also interviewed Brad Parscale, President Trump's former campaign manager. He told us he understood that President Trump planned as early as July that he would say he won the election even if he lost,” Lofgren said.
BUT HE DIDN’T STOP THERE!
Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin relates, after reading it in Maggie Haberman’s recent book, that
... Trump spent the days following his loss telling aides that, despite a long-respected custom to do otherwise, he would not be leaving the White House on January 20. “I’m just not going to leave,” Trump told one aide, according to Haberman. “We’re never leaving,” the then president told another person.
What made him give it up? No word on that, but maybe it was the realization that if he convinces everyone he actually did win in 2020, would that mean he couldn’t run in 2024?
AND THEN HE LAUNCHED HIS ILL-FATED LEGAL CHALLENGES. BUT WHY?
Maybe he imagined we’d all magically discover the election actually was somehow crooked, but I think more likely he figured his fellow Republicans — assuming they were as twisted as he was — would joyfully join in his scam.
This TIME summary (excerpted), titled “Here are all the Lawsuits the Trump Campaign Has Filed Since Election Day -- And Why Most Are Unlikely to Go Anywhere”, by Alana Abramson and Abigail Abrams, was published November 7 of 2020, right after the election, but updated a week or so later.
It lists — JUST FOR THE BENEFIT OF ELECTION DOUBTERS — the legal motions Trump’s campaign filed in each state, and their outcomes, interspersed with excerpts of an article from The Washington Post by Ann Gerhart. I also inserted some updates from Wikipedia.
I hope you don’t find this too boring, but if you do, don’t blame me! I didn’t do all this! Blame Donald Trump and his fellow-travelling retrobates!!
(Some, but not all, of the non-Italicized EMPHASIS in the following is mine).
PENNSYLVANIA
1. To compel Philadelphia election officials to stop counting ballots.
A federal judge DISMISSED the request.
2. To compel state election officials to allow Trump campaign officials closer observation of the counting process.
A state judge ruled in the campaign’s favor ... On Nov. 15, the state’s supreme court OVERTURNED the lower court’s ruling, ruling that the original rules the campaign was fighting were justified.
Levitt says this ruling will likely affect the pace of the count, rather the outcome. “Imagine a gymnasium, with observers lining the walls: to let the observers get closer, they’ve got to move the count closer to the walls and not be counting in the center,” he writes. Since people can no longer count in the center of the gym, “the count is going to move more slowly.”
3. To compel Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and all 67 counties to impose an earlier date for voters to show proof of identification if it was not on their initial ballots.
On November 12, the presiding judge ruled in favor of the campaign, writing that ballots cast by voters who had not provided supplemental identification by Nov. 9 could not be counted. ... [Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh] Shapiro said on Twitter the ruling impacted “very few ballots.”
Local Republicans filed a separate suit against Boockvar in state court, alleging she subverted state law when she issued guidance telling voters with deficiencies on their mail-in ballots to cast provisional ballots, and trying to prevent those provisional ballots from being counted. A state judge DENIED that request, but ordered officials to segregate provisional ballots from voters who submitted deficient mail-in ballots before election day.
4. To compel the Montgomery County Board of Elections to stop counting mail-in-ballots
The campaign and Republican National Committee filed suit to halt the process of counting mail-in ballots in Montgomery County, one of the counties in suburban Philadelphia, alleging that the board of elections was counting 592 ballots that had not been placed in secrecy envelopes and was therefore not complying with requirements. ...
On November 13, a judge DENIED the request from the campaign, and ordered that the county could count the ballots.
5. To intervene in an already existing dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court about whether ballots the state received after 8 p.m. on Election Day should count. ...
The backstory: After Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court extended the ballot receipt deadline to Nov. 6, state Republicans twice appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The first time they were unsuccessful, and the second time the court declined to expedite the decision before the election, but left open the possibility of hearing it afterwards.
Update on this, per Wikipedia:
“Dismissed by the District Court, appealed to 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals; dismissed, and appealed to the Supreme Court which DISMISSED it without comment on February 22, 2021”.
6. To stop Boockvar and seven individual counties from certifying the election results
The campaign filed a 105 page federal lawsuit on Nov. 9 alleging state officials created a “two tiered” system to ensure Biden would win the state by allowing vote-by mail – a violation the constitution’s equal protection clause ... the Democratic National Committee [had] filed a motion to intervene. Legal experts have said it [was] unlikely the case [would] succeed. [Richard L. Hasen] wrote in the Atlantic that the claims are “ludicrous.”
On Nov. 13, two attorneys with the law firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur withdrew from representing the campaign. On Nov. 15, the campaign filed an amended, narrowed, complaint that focused solely on voters that had been allowed to correct deficiencies on their ballots. On Nov. 16, the second group of attorneys representing the campaign withdrew from the case.
Update on this, per Wikipedia:
“The Trump campaign filed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on November 22, 2020. Judge Stephanos Bibas released a sharply-worded legal opinion on November 27, which stated: "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. WE HAVE NEITHER HERE” ...
7. To stop Bucks County from counting mail-in ballots
The campaign had previously filed a lawsuit in state court on election day to stop Bucks County – a suburban county near Philadelphia where Biden narrowly won – from counting mail-in ballots, but the lawsuit was dismissed.
Update on this, per Wikipedia:
“[Bucks County Court of Common Pleas, Pennsylvania] Judge Robert O. Baldi denied the plaintiffs petition and ordered all ballots to be counted. The Trump campaign appealed the decision; on November 25, the Commonwealth Court also ruled that all ballots should be counted.
The Trump campaign filed an emergency petition in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, asking for review of the case, and on December 8, the court DENIED the petition for appeal.”
AND NOW, MORE ON PENNSYLVANIA FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:
Were representatives from both parties allowed to observe counting of votes in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia?
Claim: Trump tweeted on Nov. 13 that he won Pennsylvania because “700,000 ballots were not allowed to be viewed in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.” He and Giuliani, his personal attorney, [had] continued to make the claim. In a court filing, the Trump campaign contended that “Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties alone received and processed 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots without review by the political parties and candidates.” ...
Fact: Under Pennsylvania election law, each political party and candidate is entitled to have a representative “in the room” to watch ballots being counted, and state and local officials have said that all parties had access to the count. Allegheny County spokeswoman Amie Downs has said that “at no time were canvassing operations conducted without observers having the opportunity to see the process and the counting.”
Braced for conspiracy theories, Philadelphia authorities live-streamed the count online. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) said on Nov. 4 that “all parties have canvass observers” during the count, which continued for several days. Some 2.4 million people in Pennsylvania voted by mail in the 2020 election, and their ballots could not be opened and counted until Election Day, according to a law enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.
In its ongoing federal suit against the state and county boards of election, the campaign dropped its claim for legal action based on the assertion that observers were denied access to the count. ...
In a ruling on Nov. 21, Brann dismissed the suit, writing that the Trump campaign had used “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” stitched together “like Frankenstein’s Monster” in a bid to throw out millions of votes. A federal appeals court upheld that ruling on Nov. 27, writing: ... “Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”
IS IT A PLETHORA OF PINOCCHIOS ... or a staff meeting of Donald Trump’s legal team? Although one could be thrown off by the Pinocchio-noses and wooden heads, this is, in fact, a display in a store window in Florence, Italy. (Vladimir Menkov via Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0)
NEVADA
1. To impose an injunction on the automated signature-verification machines used in Clark County as ballots continue to be counted.
A federal judge REJECTED the request on Nov. 6, ruling that federal judges should not be involved in state election administration and there is no evidence Clark County is doing anything unlawful.
2. To compel state election officials to allow the public closer observation at a Clark County ballot-counting facility.
... A district judge rejected the lawsuit, ruling they lacked standing to bring the claims and had no evidence to back up their arguments. The plaintiffs appealed to the state Supreme Court, which accepted the request to expedite the case, but DENIED the request for immediate relief. In a November 5 order, the State Supreme Court said the campaign and state Republicans had REACHED A SETTLEMENT. ... On November 10, the campaign officially filed to dismiss the suit.
AND A BIT MORE NEVADA FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:
Did election officials manipulate signature-verification machinery?
Trump claim: Trump has repeated unfounded claims that election officials in Democratic-leaning Clark County manipulated a machine used to verify signatures to “allow large numbers of ballots to be counted that otherwise would never have passed muster.” ... “They said you could sign your name as Santa Claus and it would be accepted.”
Reality: After a nine-hour evidentiary hearing that focused in large part on the signature-verification machine, a Carson City judge found no evidence that the use of the so-called Agilis machine was illegal, error-prone or had led to the counting of fraudulent votes. ...
Then other Republicans filed a lawsuit making similar claims in federal court, adding a new claim that the Agilis machine’s failure had disenfranchised onevoter, Jill Stokke.
Stokke said she went to vote in person, only to learn that county records showed her as already having cast a mail ballot. Her lawyers argued that was the fault of the Agilis machine, which had wrongly verified someone else’s signature as Stokke’s.
But there was no evidence that the Agilis machine was involved at all. In fact, when Stokke complained, officials reviewed her signature manually and found it to be a match. They told her she could vote if she signed an affidavit swearing that the signature on the mail ballot was not hers.
She refused.
The federal judge also declined to order changes, finding “little to no evidence that the machine is not doing what it is supposed to do.”
MICHIGAN
1. To halt the counting of absentee ballots, on the grounds that campaign officials had not been given access to observe the process as required by state law.
Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens DENIED the campaign’s request on Nov. 6.
2. To halt the certification of election results in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city and a Democratic stronghold.
Judge Timothy Kenny DENIED the motion for injunctive relief on Nov. 6, saying there was no evidence that oversight procedures had not been followed.
3. To halt the certification of election results because of voter fraud
... The campaign said in its complaint that they have over 100 sworn affidavits from election challengers to prove these allegations. An examination of the affidavits found NO EVIDENCE of fraud. The majority alleged they faced intimidation when trying to raise objections, and were frequently admonished to stay within six feet of election officials.
AND HERE’S A SMALL CHUNK OF MICHIGAN FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:
Trump claim, Dec. 2: “In one Michigan county, as an example that used Dominion Systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched. From Trump to Biden.”
Reality: ... Antrim County, which Trump won by 30 points in 2016, initially was awarded to Biden. Election officials questioned those unofficial results and found human, not machine, error. The county clerk failed to update the software used to collect voting-machine totals before sending the results. The mistake caused a discrepancy in vote tallies for a few hours, according to an explanation posted Nov. 6 on the website of Michigan’s secretary of state, and it was corrected. ...
A Michigan lawsuit led by former Trump adviser Sidney Powell that sought to decertify the results was dismissed on Dec. 7 by U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker, who noted that the plaintiffs had not offered any proof that Dominion machines had flipped votes from Trump to Biden, but rather brought “an amalgamation of theories, conjecture and speculation that such alterations were possible.”
GEORGIA
1. To disqualify about 53 ballots.
A poll watcher in Chatham County reported seeing a stack of late ballots that may have arrived after the 7 p.m. Election Day deadline get mixed in with ballots that had arrived on time.
A Superior Court judge in Chatham County REJECTED the suit on Nov. 5 after hearing testimony from county officials that the ballots had, in fact, arrived on time. “There is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7:00 p.m. on Election Day,” the court found.
AND A TINY TAD OF GEORGIA FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:
Does video show suitcases stuffed with ballots or standard storage?
Trump claim: The president retweeted his own campaign account’s tweet that “video footage from Georgia shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from under a table AFTER supervisors told poll workers to leave room and 4 people stayed behind to keep counting votes.” ...
Reality: An affidavit filed by [Frances Watson] the chief investigator for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office on Dec. 6 stated that ... “Investigation and review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables as had been reported by some.”
After interviewing witnesses and viewing the security footage from the arena, Watson “discovered that observers and media were not asked to leave. They simply left on their own when they saw one group of workers, whose job was only to open envelopes and who had completed that task, also leave.”
Boxes that were packed with ballots that had already been opened but not counted were resealed and placed under the table for the next session of counting, Watson said in the affidavit.
ARIZONA
... On November 7, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit in state court alleging voters’ ballots had been rejected because they contained “bleeds,” splotches” and “stray marks.” ... Election officials have said these claims are false. ... On Nov. 13, the campaign’s attorney FILED A NOTICE of mootness, acknowledging the lawsuit was unlikely to change the outcome.
AND SOME MORE OF ARIZONA FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:
Were thousands of ballots mishandled in Maricopa County?
Trump claim: The president has made a slew of false statements about Arizona’s election processes. At a Dec. 6 rally in Georgia for its two U.S. senators, he said: “A sample of 100 ballots reviewed by a judge found that a very small percentage of these ballots — very small, but when you look at it, it was turned out to be very large. It was tens of thousands of votes, more than we would’ve needed to win Arizona.”
In a 46-minute prerecorded video released on Dec. 2, the president said: “In Arizona, in-person voters whose ballots produced error messages from tabulation machines were told to press a button that resulted in their votes not being counted. Also, in Arizona, the attorney general announced that mail-in ballots had been stolen from mailboxes and hidden under a rock.” ...
Fact: Biden won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes by about 10,000 votes. A judge dismissed the lawsuit on Nov. 13, after Trump campaign attorney Kory Langhofer acknowledged that only about 190 ballots had overvotes in the presidential race on the count’s ballots.
On Nov. 19, another state judge dismissed a separate lawsuit, also filed by the Arizona GOP, that sought to have Maricopa County redo a hand count of its audit.
The state’s attorney general said his office investigated the unopened ballots, which were delivered back to the proper voters, and found no wrongdoing. ...
Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward filed a formal election contest in Maricopa County court. She asked the court to annul the election, claiming misconduct by election officials and widespread errors that had resulted in Biden wrongly being named the winner of the state.
As part of the legal proceedings, Ward’s lawyers were allowed to inspect 1,626 damaged ballots that were “duplicated” — a process by which a bipartisan group of election workers determine the voter’s intent and then fill out a clean, machine-readable ballot. They discovered a total of nine errors that, had they not occurred, would have netted Trump six votes. Applying that error rate to all duplicated ballots countywide would have netted Trump only 103 votes — not the thousands that Trump claimed.
A Maricopa County judge dismissed Ward’s lawsuit, finding no evidence of fraud, misconduct or widespread errors that would justify overturning the election.
HERE’S A LITTLE ADDENDUM FROM THE WASHINGTON POST, TO COVER SOMETHING NOT INCLUDED IN THE ABOVE:
Was voting software from Dominion compromised?
Trump claim: Trump has spread claims that voting software is “used in states where tens of thousands of votes were stolen from us and given to Biden.” He said in repeated tweets that Dominion Voting Systems is “horrible, inaccurate and anything but secure,” all of which were flagged by Twitter as disputed. He retweeted a baseless report that the voting-machine system had “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.”
Reality: There is no evidence that any voting systems were compromised, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
“The systems and processes used by election officials to tabulate votes and certify official results are protected by various safeguards that help ensure the accuracy of election results,” the agency notes on its “Rumor Control” page that refutes disinformation and misinformation about the accuracy of the election results.
But then, just for spite, a coup de grace from the sore loser:
The president fired the agency’s director on Nov. 17 with a tweet that carried a now-commonplace disclaimer from Twitter: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
Christopher Krebs led successful efforts to help state and local election offices protect their systems and oversaw efforts to safeguard against foreign and domestic disinformation campaigns. He had countered the president’s unfounded claims of ballot fraud.
And, for good measure — just for those still harboring doubts about the voting machines supposedly in control of some long-dead Venezuelan dictator — there’s this release from Dominion’s website:
The U.S. government has confirmed through multiple reports that no vote flipping, voting machine manipulation, or foreign government interference took place in the 2020 elections.
Election authorities and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) stated there “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
The Director of National Intelligence reported in March 2021 there are "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process."
The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed no evidence exists that foreign governments or other actors interfered with the elections, and claims about foreign governments manipulating or owning election infrastructure used in the 2020 elections are “not credible.” The U.S. Army debunked false claims about an overseas election server raid.
A MITRE National Election Security Lab data analysis involving Dominion systems in eight key battleground states found no “evidence of compromise or fraud.”
AS MY EPILOGUE, I’D LIKE TO DISCUSS THE CRUCIAL QUESTION OF HOW YOU PROVE SOMETHING TO BE TRUE:
If there exists either one god or many gods, they might know the absolute truth of something, but the rest of us have to just hope for the best that we can find it out, and then use our skills to persuade others to believe it.
The law has devised its own procedures for discovering the truth over the centuries, such as this, from History.com:
Witch swimming derived from the “trial by water,” an ancient practice where suspected criminals and sorcerers were thrown into rushing rivers to allow a higher power to decide their fate.
HAH! As if!!
But how about, for example, proving witches were witches?
As part of the infamous “swimming test,” accused witches were dragged to the nearest body of water, stripped to their undergarments, bound and then tossed in to see if they would sink or float.
Since witches were believed to have spurned the sacrament of baptism, it was thought that the water would reject their body and prevent them from submerging.
According to this logic, an innocent person would sink like a stone, but a witch would simply bob on the surface.
The victim typically had a rope tied around their waist so they could be pulled from the water if they sank, but it wasn’t unusual for accidental drowning deaths to occur.
Okay, yet over the years, I’m sure this methodology has been improved upon.
But look, a country can’t go on forever not knowing who got the most votes, and therefore, won some election.
There are ways, at least good enough for our purposes (as opposed to, say, God’s?), to find out who won in 2020, except that all these ways were tried, leaving no reasonable doubt to any but the diehards and the disappointed who, I guess, will vow to carry their doubts to their graves — at which point, I doubt they or anyone else will care.
Somebody heard somebody talk about some unknown person they saw toting a box from his car into a Detroit vote-counting center, which could have been forged ballots, although it might also have been a news photographer schlepping his camera equipment (which turned out to be the case).
But if you insist on investigating some such case, find evidence, and then, in fact, proof that it was fraud, and if you succeed, then good on you!
But if all attempts at finding proof fail, then you’re likely wrong about it. Suspicions are not proof, and until confirmed, they’re just notions without substance, nothing but sparks bouncing around inside your brain. You should just leave them be.
But in the meantime? Do your country a favor!
Please try to talk your favorite losing candidates out of wasting their country’s time and energy with these annoyingly-disruptive “Hail-Mary” passes!
You need to think hard and realize that there’s probably a good reason the Founders didn’t allow Donald Trump’s kind of shenanigans into the Constitution, gimmicks and ploys that are not designed to find the truth but just to find some way to beat our system of allowing the American people to choose their leaders.
BUT HERE’S THE THING ...
LET ME JUST SAY, FOR ARGUMENT’S SAKE, THAT I HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE, IN FACT, NOT REALLY A NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN, BUT WERE BORN IN SOME KENYAN ZOO TO A FAMILY OF KANGAROOS. (WHAT MAKES ME THINK YOU WERE? I HAVE NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE, BUT IT CAME FROM A FRIEND’S COUSIN WHO SAW SOMEBODY TWIT IT ON TWEETER.)
Don’t believe me? Then prove me wrong!!
And if you can’t? Then I will immediately file a motion or lawsuit in some federal court to have your vote disqualified, your citizenship revoked, as well as your driver’s license, voting registration, your frequent flyer miles, any supermarket coupons on your person, and also those of your children and pets, if any.
My point (assuming I even have one) is that none of this makes any damned sense, so we need to stop pretending like there’s nothing wrong with making something out of all this nothingness.
And while we’re at it:
WE ALL NEED TO STOP TREATING DONALD TRUMP’S RECENT WASHINGTON GIG AS IF IT’S JUST ANOTHER AMERICAN PRESIDENCY!
It was a form of scam, all about the glorification of himself, with little regard for the country.
But to Republicans, of course — even those who can’t stand him but consider themselves pragmatic people of the world — it’s been a useful scam!
After all, he may be an obnoxious jerk, but he’s still much more likely than any Democrat to deliver on conservative policies that reflect conservative values!
And the reason I know that is, being a Democrat, I was able to overlook much of Bill Clinton’s so-called trivial “private life” on the grounds that at least he, unlike any Republican, was willing and able to deliver on what we Democrats wanted done.
But to end this, here’s something I will call the “Biological Argument for the Existence of Truth”:
Too many people find no problem with claiming they just “know it in their gut” that something is true. I think these people are looking for the answers in all the wrong places.
If they really want good answers, they need to learn how to look for them in their brain rather than their intestines.
They should know by now that whatever’s in your brain could be with you for the rest of your life, while — assuming things work the way they should — what’s in your guts will be gone by the end of the day.
But that’s okay! It’s the way things are supposed to work.
