RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/most-important-question-ab

Since the day after the 2020 presidential election, I have said I am agnostic with regard to whether the election was honestly or dishonestly decided.

The primary reasons for my agnosticism are the usual ones:

The anomalies:

In 132 years, no president has received more votes in his run for reelection and lost. Yet Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 — and lost.

Trump won 18 of the 19 counties both Democrats and Republicans regard as the “bellwether” counties that virtually always go with the outcome of presidential elections. Yet he lost.

He won four bellwether states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina. Yet he lost.

Republicans held onto all the House seats they were defending and gained another 13 seats. Yet, Trump lost.

Add the following to the anomalies:

Unprecedented efforts were made in some states to change election laws.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/industrialscale_election_fraud__did_it_happen.html

I’ve read pieces from congresspeople, CEOs of tech companies, from hacks on television (like Karl Rove) that there was no election fraud, let’s move on. 

Wait just a minute. 

I led the team that built the fraud detection engine for the largest online auction house on the planet.  They were on the front page of USA Today because some mother never received that gift for her child after sending in her last dollar.  The auction house publicly said their multi-billion-dollar brand was in jeopardy.

I led industrial-scale fraud investigations in the biggest of the big leagues, and proved fraud.

Cyberauction fraud is really complicated. A perp runs a scam where they sell a computer, for instance, get paid and ship the product.  They do this for weeks, building trust.  Then they sell 20 computers, keep the dough, ship nothing, and off they go.

What can the auction house do? 

They kick the perp off the site. What does the perp do?  He changes his name, credit card, mailing address, every bit of information about himself and rejoins as a new, clean seller.  And another bunch of customers gets screwed!

The Secret Service, the FBI, about every fraud detection company tried to solve a problem where the perp changed every identifier thus left no trail.  No pattern recognition.  No matching on any field.  Neural net = zero. Nothing.

Well, my team built a cyber-fraud technology and solved the problem.  We broke insurance fraud rings where the insurance firm’s 30-person, police trained, 25-year experienced fraud team said there was no fraud.  The funniest example is where we flagged a doctor, the recipient of a decade’s worth of six figure checks from this insurer.  The fraud team said the guy was clean.  Nothing to see here!

https://townhall.com/columnists/jamesmccoy/2021/01/18/did-truth-matter-on-january-6th-will-it-ever-matter-again-n2583269

Editor’s Note: This column is co-authored by Loyd Pettegrow

“Yes, January 6th did matter!  It remains to be seen if the truth behind that day will ever be known, and just how much truth, if any, will matter in American politics in the future.”

Hillary Clinton counseled then-candidate Joe Biden not to concede, “no matter what!” That was before myriad video accounts, poll worker claims and sworn affidavits attesting to illegal and fraudulent conduct in the 2020 presidential election. The “never concede” wise advice to Joe Biden has since been considered unpatriotic, even seditious behavior for President Trump. Ah, Democrat hypocrisy!

When President Trump called for Georgia’s officials to verify voter signatures and to make sure all voters were legal residents of the state, his request was denied. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger boldly stated, “truth matters.” Does it really? That truth matters, is exactly the foundation of President Trump’s refusal to concede the election. President Reagan advocated the practice of “trust but verify.” In the wake of a global pandemic and the most problematic election in the nation’s history, one can reasonably legitimize President Trump’s reluctance to trust, and certainly his persistent call to verify. After all, a federal commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter had warned of the potential dangers of wise-spread mail-in balloting.  

To the mainstream media and the Democrats, President Trump had no right to challenge the veracity of the unorthodox 2020 election practices. Christopher Krebs, Deep State Director of the Cyber Security Agency – a department in Homeland Security, called the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.” That was certainly a bold statement coming from a man who was at the helm when the largest security data breach of the federal government was reported on December 13, 2020, several months after it occurred. His credibility was certainly questionable! 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/18/election-lawsuits-move-forward-despite-silencing-crusade/

As the country looks back at the mayhem that has unfolded over the past few months, one moment stands out: The most consequential event since Election Day—hands down—was the Supreme Court’s rejection of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against four states that helped decide the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

In fact, it’s easy to assume if the court had agreed to consider the petition, the melee on January 6 never would have happened.

Paxton’s case detailed the unlawful handling of mail-in ballots in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, votes that overwhelmingly favored Joe Biden. (Biden flipped those states by a combined 270,000 votes; more than 9 million ballots were absentee.) Several Republican state attorneys general and more than 100 GOP House members immediately joined the suit. There were no claims of “kraken” or foreign servers or bribed governors, just indisputable facts of what happened.

But a mere four days after receiving the 154-page filing on December 7, the Supreme Court neglected its duty to protect the U.S. Constitution, refusing to ensure that election laws codified by state legislatures were followed in accordance with the Electors Clause.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in an abrupt order issued December 11. (Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas disagreed with the majority’s “standing” argument and concluded the case did fall within the court’s jurisdiction.)

In a hard slap to both the Constitution and those responsible for their rise to the highest court in the land, the three justices appointed by the president agreed with the majority’s ruling.

Now that the news media, Big Tech, and lawmakers of both parties are attempting to criminalize criticism of the 2020 election—the president was impeached a second time for allegedly inciting an “insurrection” following his fiery speech to supporters gathered in the capital on January 6—the court’s denial of the Texas lawsuit looms large. As I cautioned in December, the vacuum created by inaction in the court system and the Justice Department would fuel chaos.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/left-slanderously-accuses-trump-inciting-capitol-joseph-klein/

A contingent of protestors invaded, vandalized and occupied portions of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th — as the constitutional process of electoral college certification of the 2020 presidential election results was getting underway. The mob violence was an outright assault on the greatest constitutional republic in the world. But instead of making an effort to unite the country against such anarchy, the Left’s leaders and their friends in the establishment media are applying their usual double standard of “for thee, but not for me.” Not surprisingly, they are blaming President Trump for the Capitol unrest, falsely claiming he incited violence during his speech to supporters at Wednesday’s otherwise peaceful “Save America” rally.

President Trump and his supporters at the rally were simply exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech and peaceable assembly. The president’s refusal to concede an election marred by reports of widespread fraud which troubled many voters was not an incitement to violence, nor was his presentation of evidence of a stolen election.

President Trump told his supporters, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women.” In so doing, he was clearly urging them merely to march peacefully and petition their government.

President Trump did NOT tell supporters to “storm the Capitol” or anything remotely similar. He was in no way responsible for the actions of a fringe breakaway group. Moreover, it remains a question as to who the rioters actually were. Indeed, there are credible reports of Antifa infiltration of the crowd.

President Trump made a video telling people to avoid violence and he urged calm on Twitter. Yet Twitter locked him out as if he were doing the opposite.

After recessing their electoral college certification proceedings for nearly six hours until the Capitol building was secured by a strengthened law enforcement contingent, the members of Congress reconvened to resume in a bipartisan show of support for constitutional order. The electoral college results were officially certified early Thursday morning.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/trump-coup-attempt-wasnt-matthew-vadum/

Leftists and weak-kneed Republicans were quick to accuse President Donald Trump of attempting to overthrow the democratic process on January 6 as individuals bearing Trump campaign flags and paraphernalia ran amok in the United States Capitol while lawmakers were attempting to officially certify the results of the November 6 election.

The election –don’t forget—that the Democrats stole with the connivance of those same Republicans.

The disorder in the Capitol complex, during which an apparently unarmed Trump supporter, 35-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was shot to death by police, didn’t end the certification process, but merely delayed an official declaration a few hours. The barely sentient former Vice President Joe Biden, a left-winger now held hostage by even more radical elements of his anti-American party, hobbled across the finish line as he was pronounced president-elect early in the morning January 7 after lawmakers rejected a series of Republican objections to states’ presidential electors. Support for the objections collapsed after an angry mob took over the premises, smashing windows, breaking down doors, and occupying lawmakers’ offices.

Rogue lawmaker Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois, led the charge against Trump, not the rioters, labeling the freelance storming of the Capitol building then in progress “a coup attempt,” in a tweet time-stamped 2:24 p.m.

Former Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, who fled the Republican Party under pressure, tweeted “Donald Trump needs to resign or be removed from office. America has endured enough.”

RINO Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor, said President Trump has been “very disappointing” since his November election loss and that he will be “judged harshly by history.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/time_for_trump_to_start_the_great_american_party.html

Vice President Mike Pence is an honorable gentleman.  We know from Jenna Ellis, a constitutional law scholar and Donald Trump’s legal counsel, that he is fully aware of the unconstitutionality of the Electoral Count Act.  He is also fully aware that he has the authority to call on the contested states of AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, and WI to have their legislatures revisit the certification of their electoral votes before allowing them to be counted.  And yet… nothing.

Joe Biden will be our next President. He didn’t win, he stole the office. Or more accurately, it was stolen for him. Trump’s trusted ally, Mike Pence, has refused to fight.

To Pence’s name we must add a legion of other subsea invertebrates with “R” after their names.  So-called “Republicans” have in large measure become pale versions of their political counterparts across the aisle.  One wag put it this way: Republicans are Democrats, just twenty years late.  Translated into plain English, our frustration with D.C. is with almost all those who have official chairs in the Congress, the White House, and supporting agencies.  Those people serve themselves, with complete disregard for those of us who live outside the Beltway.  The stolen election has lit a match.

Donald Trump will change his address within a couple of weeks.  He will still have a voice, but the swamp and fake news media will feel free to ignore him unless the Democrats in power decide to prosecute him as an example for any who might ever again deign to think or speak freely.  The Republican Party will happily disregard him as an uncomfortable interlude in their peaceful slide into irrelevance.

If America is to have a future as something other than a vessel for the aggrandizement and enrichment of the privileged few, Donald Trump is probably the only figure large enough to create an organization with the size and sway to elect officials who are committed to the idea that the people are the rulers of America, as he said in his inaugural address.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/08/maga-patriots-the-best-of-people-in-the-worst-of-times/

Why repeat hackneyed phrases about annus horribilis 2020? 

Recall the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities, a classic by Charles Dickens. Interspersed in that epical introduction are countervailing, sweetness-and-light words. Excise these—and you get 2020:

. . . it was the worst of times . . . it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch . . . of incredulity, it was . . . the season of darkness . . . it was the winter of despair. . . . we had nothing before us.

MAGA men and women are just that: The best of people in the worst of times. 

These good people converged on Washington, D.C. Wednesday to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote.

They, who have “nothing before them,” had come to demand that something be done by those who had “brought [them] forth into this wilderness,” yet sit “by the fleshpots [on the Potomac] and [eat] bread to the full.” (My adaptation of Exodus 16:3.)

Cassandra Fairbanks of Gateway Pundit framed her report about the protest that ensued just right: “Patriots Have Stormed the Capitol Building—Masses Breaching Federal Barriers—Cops Losing Control.” 

Yes, patriots. Rage that had been simmering over an election whose results lacked constitutional credibility had finally come to a boil. 

Prior to the eruption, on January 5, patriots had gathered at the Freedom Plaza in D.C. They patiently awaited their president, who was due to deliver a “Stop the Steal” address the following day. In short succession, they recited the “Lord’s Prayer” (from Luke, not the one-chord grunts of Lil Baby, or other rappers, emblematic of the Black Lives Matter repertoire).

These good people, who have been thoroughly marginalized and demonized—their country made diverse to the point of distrust—puncture their prayers with an “amen,” ancient Hebrew for “so be it.” 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/07/the-end/

In the end, almost everyone got what they deserved.

The president’s Achilles’ heel—relying on the wrong people to advance his political interests—led to his final ouster this week. Donald Trump ran out of runway and instead of preparing for a soft landing, he pumped the gas. It’s hard to blame him: His court challenges had been thwarted by the very judges he elevated to the federal bench, his hodgepodge legal team whirred in defeat, and Republican senators he helped elect quickly turned on him.

As usual, the president was right: extensive proof of vote fraud in key states justified his belief, shared by tens of millions of Americans, that the election was stolen from him. Trump’s instinct to fight back was spot-on but the plan and the people he put in place failed to launch yet again. Despite advance warning that a majority mail-in election would doom his chance to win, the president’s team was infuriatingly unprepared both in terms of messaging and legal strategy. An odd press conference the day after the election featured not top-tier legal killers but his son and daughter-in-law.

The prologue already was written.

A vacuum created by a complete lack of interest from his own Justice Department—led by a man the president refused to fire even though he had cause to do so months before—was filled with any number of caricatures peddling far-fetched claims obscuring legitimate evidence. The president, as is his wont, whether because of loyalty or ignorance, didn’t shut them down until it was too late. The damage to his case was done, another self-inflicted wound suffered unnecessarily at the most crucial time imaginable.

As the president greeted tens of thousands of Americans who had traveled to the nation’s capital to show their support for Trump’s last stand, Senate Republicans learned they would lose control of the chamber after both Georgia races were called for the Democrats.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/08/lefts-hypocrisy-on-full-display-after-d-c-insurrection/

The angry election fraud protest that led to the temporary takeover of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday perfectly illuminates the hypocrisy of the Democratic far left when it comes to political violence.

Republican officials and rank-and-file GOP conservatives immediately and forcefully condemned the pro-Trump rioters. Nothing unusual about that: During this riot-torn year, Republicans have consistently, loudly and frequently denounced violence, no matter who did it.

What about the Democrats and their extreme-left supporters? Tragically, for them, violence is always acceptable when it’s in service to their cause. That’s especially true since the riots and mass protests began in late May following the death of George Floyd.

But, as usual, congressional Democrats, the legacy press and social media giants have misreported, distorted and twisted facts to suit their own leftist agenda and inflame public opinion.

Republicans, however, have taken a mature and responsible path.

Oklahoma Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin, appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday, didn’t excuse the behavior. Far from it.

“There is no excuse and no one is to blame but ourselves,” he told host George Stephanopoulos. “We need to take a hard look at our country, we need to take a hard look at the way we debate. We can agree to disagree but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. That doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. That doesn’t mean I don’t love this country any more or less than you but what we did yesterday was absolutely inexcusable.”