Stop the Steal

Two remarkable things happened on January 4th, 2021. Several hours apart, they both deeply affected me. During the day, I saw this video from John Voight

Moved very near to tears; this is my America. All across the country, people we don’t know are feeling the exact same way – this is my America; we take it very personally, we own it. There are people – at best, misguided; at worst, evil – there are people who have no such connection with the land and the history of this country, people who would strip this country of all that she is and all the promise she holds for the purpose of making it a sort of ‘utopia’ that will never exist. America, as she is, IS the utopia. If you don’t believe that, ask someone who immigrated here and found all that they were looking for. This is my America

What else needs to be said?

The second thing that deeply affected me on January 4th was later in the evening, President Trump’s rally for Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue. The phrase “eleventh hour” kept running through my head. People love President Trump because he loves America – he, like us, remembers the America we grew up in; the America we want all our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren to grow up in. The flag, baseball, and apple pie. We, the America-loving citizens of the United States, are at five minutes to the midnight of America unless the man of the eleventh hour can prevail. I don’t worship Trump; I only worship Jesus. But for right here, right now, President Trump is the only man who can save the United States of America. I pray deeply and earnestly that it is in God’s will for this man to save my country.

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From Neo:

Audre is spot on, for my America, her America, Mr. Voight’s America, Mr. Alverez’s America, and so many more millions of us, the Republic itself is in danger. The picture above is the rally yesterday in Washington, DC. Never in my lifetime, or any American living today have we seen a situation where we simply believe that a Presidential election, has been stolen by the Democrat Party, aided and abetted, by a large part of the Republican Party, by the almost entirely partisan (fake) news media, by the courts, state and federal including the Supreme Court, and by the almost entirety of government employees.

At this point, to us, it feels like the people versus the entire establishment, and in fact, as I write this on Tuesday evening, the Republican Senate candidates in Georgia are trailing (it’s not even close to over, so please God, that may change) but they are hardly really strong candidate for the people either. Like my idiot Senator Ben Sasse, they are what we have come to call RINO’s, but as I decided when I voted for Sasse in the general (but not the primary) a RINO is better than a jackass. But that may be ending, if the Biden illegitimate regime takes power, all bets are off. As Rabbi Dov Fischer wrote in The Spectator Monday, Not This Time…

No matter how the next weeks play out, a new Republican conservative has arisen who will not roll over and play dead for the delight of Democrats and their Left media. Trump did not really create this new populism; rather, he gave voice to it. And now, for the first time in nearly a century, this stronger conservative voice and strength will dominate the Opposition. It may be too loyal and patriotic to be a “Resistance,” but it will be an “Opposition” such that the Democrat-Media-Left has not before seen nor experienced. Roll over and play dead? Not this time, dear Leftists.

We the American people created this Republic covenanted to God alone and dedicated to the freedom of each and every one of us. It will stand as it always has, or we will refer to Thomas Jefferson’s famous words.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

We did it before against far longer odds, and if needs be, we will do it again. It is our Right, nay it is our DUTY to do so.

Sunday Funnies: Deo Vindice

So, Texas (and 17 more states don’t have standing to challenge Pennsylvania and 4 other states effectively disenfranchising 74 million + Americans. In short, SCOTUS is joining Joe Biden in the basement and will have to be lucky not to get a half dozen additional so-called justices next year. The title you should check Wikipedia for its history.

This is likely true

And of course

The American Schism

Depending on your knowledge of church history, you may or may not know the term ‘schism’. There have been three in Christendom, and one that is but is not called so. The first is when the Nestorians (including Alexandria and the Copts left after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the second is when the Eastern Orthodox left after the addition of the filioque in the Creed, the one not really called that is the Reformation, where the Protestant churches left Rome’s sway. The third one is the one that concerns us here, the one sometimes called the Babylonian Captivity. where there was a Pope in Avignon, France and for most of the time there was also one in Rome. None have been good for Christianity.

It was political, as the Papacy was getting too involved in politics for the Pope’s taste, and then after the papacy moved back an overmighty bureaucracy (The College of Cardinals) appointed a second Pope in Avignon. This went on for 69  years.

So what has this to do with 2020 America? This, that schism divided the church rather badly because both sides were hurling thunderbolts, excommunion, interdict, heresy, all those fateful words that made fellow communicants into the other, and not entirely human. And that is where we are. Writing in American Thinker, Steve Deace says:

History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. America is not merely divided, as many of today’s political commentators claim, but it’s in the midst of a Great Schism as the church was in Avignon. Two completely distinct cultures are now simultaneously claiming the same nuts and bolts of the structure of America as their own, but with holistically different reasons and visions for doing so. One side wants to use it to maintain a way of life that was once considered traditional in America. The other desires revolution to undo many of those traditions it views as standing in the way of their reimagining of America.

Unless President Trump’s court challenges to the integrity of the election are successful soon, Joe Biden is going to be sworn in as the next president of the United States on January 20. Given the fact that Biden represents the left’s cultural revolution, on top of the ongoing controversy surrounding his potential election, it’s quite likely that many of the 74 million people who voted for Trump’s re-election would see Biden as an illegitimate president from the get-go. And we’ve already lived through four years of Democrats and their media attempting to de-legitimize the Trump presidency even before it began.

This is the language and behavior of schism.

He’s right, I will not, no I can not, receive as legitimate an election so rife with fraud that it was prima facie stolen from the president. I could not have if it had been this obvious that President Trump had in 2016, even though I agreed with much of what he said, and I certainly can not with Joe Biden, who from reports may have sold his loyalty to the Chicoms and the Ukrainians for money, not to mention to every tinpot globalist, and proposes almost every policy that has been proven to bring about the death of prosperity and the rule of law. Nope, can’t do it. And you know what, there about 70 million Americans who think just like I do.

Obama, you may remember whined that America is ungovernable (he’s not wrong, it’s a feature of a free country, not a bug) but you ain’t seen nothing yet. When people who don’t get involved in politics, get involved in politics, things change.

If Trump is ultimately denied the presidency, he will not drift off into irrelevancy as his detractors hope. Quite the contrary: Losing this way despite massively growing his appeal among voters compared to 2016 will only make Trump stronger in the hearts and minds of his base. He will become a living martyr — something even more powerful than a president in some ways, a symbol of how far the left in America is willing to go to end anything American conservatives view as worthy of conserving: Fake News, Fake Borders, Fake Laws, Fake Genders, Fake Science, Fake Russian Collusion, Fake Pee Tapes, Fake Independent Counsels, Fake Ukrainian Collusion, Fake Social Media, Fake COVID Panic Porn, and now Fake Elections.

The right in America has finally gotten the message the American left has been trying to convey — leftists have no intent of sharing Americana with those who still believe in it. If you cherish normalcy, let alone righteousness, you will be made to care — to the point that nothing remains sacred or agreed upon. Nothing is exempt from the gaslighting — not even a drug that is suddenly claimed to be dangerous after 60 years of being publicly certified as safe.

The American left is altering the deal, and it now stands as this: either you end your way of life voluntarily, or we end it for you. That’s it, take it or leave it.

To lose to these leftists, and this disputed way, will make Trump president in absentia to millions of Americans.

Do read the article, but

Yet yes, all of that and more, the representative constitutional republic is the holy of American holies, second only to God Himself, you profane that temple at your peril. In a very real sense, none of what is happening now in the legislatures or the courts matter, we are watching the last chapter of a dismal play whose actors are mostly pseudo men of no vision or leadership, less in intelligence than the Wuhan Flu and the backbone of a worm. The upshot is that Joe Biden (or Kamala Harris) will never be the legitimate president of the United States of America.

What will happen, no one really knows, but I fear we will find out.

 

 

How is this possible?

Is this really America? I’ve already spoken about the sacredness of the American vote in an American election in any State of the United States of America. Perhaps I was wrong.

This is a video of a live hearing by the Pennsylvania State Senators and State Congressmen of some of the people who were poll count observers who signed affidavits of fraudulent votes, questionable actions by the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court, incorrect behavior by count floor managers, poll workers who, for whatever reason, advised walk-in voters that that walk-in voter already had a vote listed under their name – and they had not yet voted. Watch and listen to this video very carefully – it will help you decide for yourself whether or not this was a free and unhampered election. [The convening Senator has been banned by Twitter, I’m told. so if the video has been disappeared, you’ll know why. Neo]

This is people; this is not even a look at the polling machines. People did these things. Our ‘fellow Americans’. Our neighbors, members of our churches or civic groups, our relatives – our fellow Americans. I am now at the lowest point I’ve been in since this whole election started. I’ve always – always – been proud to be American. Right now, I’m not so sure. If there are so many ‘fellow Americans’ ready, willing, and able to abort, alter, interfere, damage our voting process and its ultimate result, then the America I grew up in died a long time ago. I’m having a great deal of trouble processing that thought.

The allegations are horrendous. The people who signed affidavits are, indeed, very brave. This is the cancel culture now – these people have put themselves at risk; not only the risk of a felony if they are lying, but also the risk of the same ilk of people who threaten the head of the GSA. They may have put their very lives on the line in stepping forward. There are further ramifications – and outrage – and NEO is going to speak to those issues.

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From Neo:

What happened this week, is best served by analogy, I think. Think of an Iowa class battleship going into a surface gun action in World War Two, say the USS Trump. The ship has 9 16 inch guns which can be individually aimed or fired from anything from one at a time to a full salvo. Each round has a range of about 30 miles and weighs as much as a small car. In fact, I have seen video footage of the New Jersey firing a salvo during the Korean War, the recoil literally shoves the 869 foot long 57,000-ton ship sideways through the water. That’s a lot of power. That what was fired in Pennsylvania above, I’m not sure if it was an opening shot or a salvo but it was main gun action.

The video listed above is the raw data, perhaps the best legislative hearing I have seen in years, serious people doing serious things, and is plenty self-explanatory. But for context here is another video, from a lawyer who I think knows what he is talking about

Yes, it is long, and he talks fast, but he covers the ramifications better than I can.

But the battleship has other weapons, the Iowa class had 25 5 inch guns (a full-on destroyer has 3). These are dual-purpose weapons for anti-ship (and shore) but also anti-aircraft use. These secondary batteries also fired this week.

As Scott Johnson of PowerLine tells us…

Sidney Powell has filed her federal lawsuit challenging the outcome of the vote in the presidential election in Georgia. The lawsuit is brought against Georgia state officials including the governor, the secretary of state, and the members of the election board on behalf of six Republican Georgia electors and two Georgia Republican Party officials.

Given that the complaint runs to 104 pages, readers may want to turn to John Solomon’s brief Just the News Just the News summary. Andrea Widburg goes into greater detail on the allegations in her American Thinker column on the complaint. […]

The lawsuit raises a host of factual and legal issues with respect to which I have no knowledge or expertise. Among other things, the complaint sets forth a legislatively unauthorized alteration in the method prescribed by statute for the handling of absentee ballots.

Among other things, the complaint alleges the huge international conspiracy that Powell previewed at the Trump legal team press conference last week. There seems to be some distance between proof of what theoretically could have happened and proof of what actually happened (in each case, according to the affidavits). I may well be mistaken, but there also seems to be some distance between proof of what actually happened and the relief requested.

This could be the secondary batteries firing but as it moves forward has the possibility of becoming targets of the main battery. If it can be proven, and Sidney Powell has a reputation as a sober and very effective lawyer, this could be quite a case.

Also, in Georgia

Lin Wood writes: “Thanksgiving Eve News! 11th Circuit granted my Emergency Motion for Expedited Review of lawsuit challenging validity of GA election procedure. We The People delivered a historic landslide win for @realDonaldTrump in GA & nationally. We The People will not allow it be stolen.”

Also in Pennsylvania, a Court has ordered a stop to any further action in perfecting the vote. this may be too late about that but there is a hearing tomorrow in this court on the legality of the modifications to absentee voting that turned it into vote by mail, without legislative authority. This is one of the cases that may well go to SCOTUS.

And there is something else, call it action for the 20  mm and 40 mm automatic cannons on that battleship. Has anybody thought about what will happen if the election of Biden is overturned, either into the Congress or in the Electoral College? It may not be likely but it is certainly possible. Especially to the Legacy Media, who have memory-holed or not even covered the story at all. I rather doubt that they (including Fox, which committed public suicide on Election Night) can survive such a thing. I read yesterday that Fox News is threatening their contributors who also appear on Newsmax that they will not be on Fox if they don’t quit. As they are doing so they sound like CNN talking about Red State America, and Red State America is returning the ‘love’ with interest.

Finally, on a Trump legacy issue, the Supreme Court Wednesday issued an injunction that said the Governor of New York may not violate the 1st Amendment by shutting down the free exercise of religion while allowing liquor stores to open, as he tried recently. From The Federalist.

The per curium opinion determined that New York’s targeted responses run in direct opposition to the First Amendment, stating, “Even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”

This is from Justice Gorsuch:

Nothing in Jacobson purported to address, let alone approve, such serious and long-lasting intrusions into settled constitutional rights. In fact, Jacobson explained that the challenged law survived only because it did not “contravene the Constitution of the United States” or “infringe any right granted or secured by that instrument.” Id., at 25.
Tellingly no Justice now disputes any of these points. Nor does any Justice seek to explain why anything other than our usual constitutional standards should apply during the current pandemic.

Mr. Ed at Samizdata notes that:

Whilst the United States Supreme Court is so constituted, there is hope for the Republic, even though this was a 5-4 victory. Meanwhile in the UK, any hope of help from the courts is a deranged fantasy. But the courts may serve a purpose in demonstrating that point.

And that is how President Trump may yey save the Union.

 

The Thomas Court is Coming

The first thing I want to do today is to welcome back my former (and future?) cooblogger Jessica Hoff back to her first current affairs post in a bit more than four years. I have missed her sense, her humor (or is that humour), her British take on American affairs, and her ability to read my mind. Welcome back, dearest friend 🙂 xxx

With her remarks last night after taking the oath as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett gave us a master class on what a US judge is supposed to be, here it is:

This, like the entire speech, is both remarkable and heartening.

I have spent a good amount of time over the last month at the Senate; both in meetings with individual senators and in days of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The confirmation process has made ever-clearer to me one of the fundamental differences between the federal judiciary and the United States Senate, and perhaps the most acute is the role of policy preferences. It is the job of a senator to pursue her policy preferences; in fact, it would be a dereliction of duty to put policy goals aside.

By contrast, it is the job of a judge to resist her policy preferences.  It would be a dereliction of duty for her to give in to them. Federal judges don’t stand for election, thus they have no basis for claiming that their preferences reflect those of the people. This separation of duty from political preference is what makes the judiciary distinct among the three branches of government. A judge declares independence not only from Congress and the president, but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her. The judicial oath captures the essence of the judicial duty; the rule of law must always control.

That is exactly like the founder’s intended. As for her personally, I like the way Jessica put it this morning.

Amy Coney Barrett did it without sacrificing her womanhood. She did not do what so many career women have had to do, which is to choose a predominantly male way (job first) over her kids. Not only did she adopt two black orphans, she has a Downes syndrome child whom she chose not to abort. What’s not to like? You’d have thought that feminists everywhere would be throwing their bras over the windmill (no, don’t go there, a lady never tells), so why the hoo-hah? It’s that last bit. She didn’t have an abortion. Not only that, she is an actual practising Catholic, not a Pelsoian/Biden Catholic (that is one who wants the vote but not the faith).

Well, except that I doubt Justice Barrett, or Jess for that matter, is any sort of feminist that we see in the 21st Century. Neither of them either needed or wanted anything other than a chance to let their light shine. I’m quite sure that either of them is quite content to be rewarded for what they do, not because they are women, but because they are the best at what they do. And that is at it should be

It was fascinating that Justice Thomas swore her in, for at least two reasons

First, he is the very man that Joe Biden when he was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee attempted to, in Justice Thomas’sown words, to lynch in the hearings. To see him sweary in Ms. Coney oh Hillary’s birthday had to hurt.

When President Bush nominated Justice Thomas, he called him the most qualified for the job, The left loudly dissented. But as The Daily Signal says:

Bush was right. Thomas was the best qualified, because he was a fiercely independent thinker with an unwavering commitment to decide cases based on what the Constitution said, not what he or the public wanted in the moment. Bush knew that Thomas had these qualities because he had watched Thomas go through fire during the Reagan administration.

As a black conservative intellectual, Thomas has been an existential threat to the liberal ruling class since he joined the Reagan administration in May 1981. As chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Thomas earned the very public enmity of the civil rights establishment for opposing quotas and racial preferences.

On the court, Thomas is an originalist, a justice who believes that the Constitution’s provisions must be interpreted consistent with the original meaning when they were ratified. Liberals do not believe a black man can legitimately hold these views.

In his 29 years on the court, Thomas, even more than Justice Scalia, has written the originalist canon. Some 700 opinions, combined with a willingness to revisit precedent when necessary. This makes a generational change in the court, at least as long as we hold the Presidency and/or the Senate.

Imagine that, judges who rule based on the law, not politics or whatever they think might work. It’s not a new day exactly though. This is exactly what the Federal courts were from the beginning until they lost their nerve at Franklin Roosevelt’s threat to pack the court.

If they do little but force Congress to again legislate, we will start to improve.

 

Vote next Tuesday, for America

Confirmation

Neo will roll his eyes but I have to mention the television series, West Wing. I learned so much from that series about which I had known nothing.

We’re watching the confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett and I never understood what that entails. Fortunately, West Wing covers some of that and I always operate under the assumption that if I don’t know something, other people may not know either. I think it’s a fair assumption.

The process takes far longer than you may expect it to. There’s generally one person in charge of the confirmation process, usually the ‘policy guy’ (I don’t have to type ‘or woman’, do I? I think we’re all adults here). He’s the guy with the ‘check list’. Amy Barrett allowed that she submitted 1800 pages for the confirmation team. Several people will have been chosen to read all or some of those pages, depending upon what topic the page covers. They read to see if the nominee for Supreme Court Justice has any legal writings detrimental to the policy of the current administration. They look for any mention displaying bias, discrimination, defamation, and/or disagreement with the current administration. They look for malfeasance and any hint of scandal.

If the written collection holds nothing that red flags the nominee, they begin the interviews of friends, co-workers, family, neighbors of the nominee. They go to previous employers. They sniff out every possible wrong the nominee may have participated in.

If there are still no red flags, the confirmation team will meet with the nominee and have a few face to face meetings, and the person’s work record is questioned and uncertain ground can be clarified and cleared. If the confirmation team finds no issues that require further inquiry, the team will then inform the president of that administration of their findings. If the president has reasons of his own, he may turn down the potential nominee and ask that another person be looked at using the same process.

If the president accepts the recommendation of the confirmation team, he then meets with the potential nominee to decide for himself whether or not he thinks the possible nominee meets whatever his personal criteria may be.

Having gone through this process and passing all the attendant laser focus of this background check of all time, the president will then announce to the press his nominee for the seat of Supreme Court Justice. And from that second forward, the members of the ‘other party’ begin the same process in regard to that nominee, considering the other party has other interests and policies that they are concerned with.

The actual hearing for confirmation, as we have learned – large and in our faces on the major networks – is a mud flinging, party boosting, scandalous innuendos, aspersions casting attempt to both ruin and/or elevate the nominee, depending on the party asking the questions.

This is what we need to understand. In this particular case, in this particular place and time, the hatred for the President of the United States is such that there is no depth of disgusting to which the Democrats will not delve. According to the Democrats, Amy Barrett has been nominated by the President to INSURE that what He wants gets done to the DETRIMENT of millions of Americans. You’re all very nice people so all I’m going to say to that is ‘stuff and nonsense’! Should she be confirmed, she will be one of eight Justices. [Nine including the primus inter pares Chief Justice*] So when they repeat – ad nauseum – that her decision will kill Roe v Wade, Obama Care, any of the cases that will come before the Court – they are lying. Pure and simple.

*The Chief Justice has no control over any legal decision made by any Justice, he does assign the writing of opinions with which he agrees and has a fair amount of administrative control of the court. admin.