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ELECTIONS

Hunter Becomes the Hunted Roger Kimball

https://spectator.us/hunter-biden-tax-investigation/?

Grifter, Sr. and Grifter, Jr.

Are the chickens coming home for Hunter Biden? It certainly seems so, though experts differ on the critical question of whether they are coming home to roost or roast. Wednesday’s news, splashed via an official communiqué from his father’s transition operation, that Hunter is being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office for possible tax fraud makes me want to bet for ‘roast’ not ‘roost’.

Here’s Hunter’s statement from Wednesday, in full:

‘I learned yesterday for the first time that the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs. I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.’

When you stop chuckling, get a load the codicil from the ‘Biden-Harris Transition’ (‘transition’ to what is not specified). ‘President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.’

How do you spell ‘non-sequitur’?

Please note that either Hunter or his father (or, to be more accurate, the people who write their copy) thought that ‘tax affairs’ sounded nicer than, say, ‘tax fraud’. But a truly fastidious person, canvassing Hunter’s randy romantic life — sleeping with his brother’s widow, for example — might lead them to choose a different word.

But nearly everyone who has reported on the investigation has cut to the chase and used ‘fraud’ so I followed suit, even though the echo of ‘voter fraud’, much on the nation’s mind at the moment, is inescapable.

Texas to the Rescue? Douglas Andrews

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76332-texas-to-the-rescue-2020-12-09

The Lone Star State’s attorney general has filed a different kind of election suit with the Supreme Court.

If President Donald Trump isn’t jetting off to Mar-a-Lago on January 20, he may well have Ken Paxton to thank for it. Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, filed a pleading with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a way that’s attracted the attention of some pretty astute legal minds.

Essentially, Texas is arguing that the electoral processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were unconstitutional, and that the results in those states should be negated. And because this is a lawsuit between states, the Supreme Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker calls it a “Hail Mary,” but anyone who follows football knows that a successful Hail Mary isn’t nearly as far-fetched as, say, an incoherent and utterly uninspiring presidential candidate getting millions more population-adjusted votes than the most appealing and charismatic candidate in modern history.

As Hinderaker writes, “The Texas motion and supporting brief are well-drafted and make a plausible case — importantly, one that, if accepted, does not require extensive fact-finding into alleged voter fraud. Reduced to its essentials, the motion alleges 1) that under the Constitution’s Electors Clause, state legislatures have plenary authority over appointment of each state’s electors; 2) that in each of the defendant states, non-legislative actors (e.g., the Secretary of State) unconstitutionally changed the rules governing this year’s election without legislative approval or ratification; 3) that these changes favored some voters over others, in violation of the [Constitution’s] Equal Protection Clause; and 4) in each state, the number of ballots that were counted pursuant to unconstitutional changes in election procedures exceeds the margin of Joe Biden’s alleged victory.”

NYT Op-Ed Writer: Why Did So Many Americans Vote for Donald Trump Again? Matt Vespa Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/12/09/nyt-oped-writer-why-did-so-many-americans-vote-for-donald-trump-again-n2581308

Democrats may be glad that Joe Biden appears to be on the cusp of officially clinching the presidency, but there’s a bit of confusion as well. Folks, the Trump campaign and its allies have yet to secure a decisive court win to continue their fight in exposing the mountain of voter fraud allegations. It’s a high bar concerning proving such fraud was so rampant and systemic that ballots should be tossed. It’s not in the cards right now. So, as Joe Biden picks his nominees for cabinet positions, hordes of liberals are celebrating, but there are some who know this really wasn’t the win they were looking for; they wanted a blue wave to crush Trumpism. Instead, Trumpism is here to stay. Donald Trump secured the most votes for re-election for an incumbent president in American history. Democrats weren’t able to retake key state legislatures which means the GOP still controls the lion’s share of mapping those congressional districts. Democrats lost seats in the House; it will be their smallest majority since the New Deal. And if things go well in the Georgia runoffs and the GOP retains the Senate, not much is going to happen for the Biden presidency.

I didn’t want this. I wanted Trump to crush Biden and perhaps if he just let the former VP hang himself with his own words in the first debate, things could have been different. Yet, a New York Times op-ed wonders why so many people voted for Trump. Here were the reasons he offered, while also giving a slight warning to the progressive left towards the end (via NYT):

Democrats, struggling to make sense of it all, are locked in yet another round of mutual recrimination: They were either too progressive for swing voters — too socialist or aggressive with ambitious policies like the Green New Deal — or not progressive enough to inspire potential Democratic voters to show up or cross over.

A Reminder About Us:By Robert Curry

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/09/a-reminder-about-us/

“I’m betting on America the exceptional and its exceptional people, but whether your gut tells you we are going to win or that the best we can hope for is to go down fighting, I urge you to get in the fight. We can all do our part to make every effort to light a fire under Republican officials, demanding that they fight with everything they have.  The Republicans need to get real and put up the kind of all-out political fight that can save them from political extinction, and save the Constitution while they are at it. You know what you can do to help. Do it, I beseech you.”

Republicans need to get real and put up the kind of all-out political fight that can save them from political extinction—and save the Constitution while they are at it.

In his splendid little book American Exceptionalism, Charles Murray reminds us it was foreigners who took the lead in claiming Americans are different:

For whatever else these observers might say about the United States, they all agreed on one thing: the United States was quite unlike their own or any other nation. It was exceptional.

The people who came to America were different from their neighbors who stayed behind—more self-reliant, more resourceful, more willing to face great challenges in order to seize the opportunities life in America offered. America was different because Americans were different. 

Most of us have a sense of that difference, I think, and when we travel to foreign lands we are often reminded of it. Everyone who has traveled abroad has his own stories. Here is a characteristic one from the American novelist John Updike:

Once, in Kenya, I was in a safari van that broke down. The driver, a black African, and the English passengers in the van sat back waiting in the dusty heat for the notified authorities to send a repairman to us. The Americans in the van, including me, though I know little about engines, insisted on popping the hood and trying to fix the machine themselves . . . the Americans were happily willing to go from being docile passengers to dynamic auto mechanics. They felt equal to the task.

For it to work, the American Idea—government by, for, and of the people under the Constitution—requires American citizens who have that certain something that sets Americans apart. 

Today, the brazen attempt to steal the presidential election raises a question: will Americans sit in the back of the van waiting for the notified authorities to rescue them from this breakdown in America’s constitutional order? Or will they pop the hood and set about fixing the engine themselves because they feel equal to the task? 

Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock Says He Didn’t Praise Murderous Dictator Fidel Castro. Here’s Video Of Him Doing It By Jordan Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/09/georgia-democrat-raphael-warnock-says-he-didnt-praise-murderous-dictator-fidel-castro-heres-video-of-him-doing-it/

Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock praised communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castor, who is responsible for tens of thousands of brutal state murders, in a sermon in 2016 days after the dictator passed away. A recently resurfaced video from 2016 shows Warnock behind his church’s podium, giving a eulogy for the authoritarian to his congregation.

“We pray for the people of Cuba in this moment. We remember Fidel Castro, whose legacy is complex. Don’t let anyone tell you a simple story; life usually isn’t very simple. His legacy is complex, kind of like America’s legacy is complex,” Warnock said.

“While we focus on political prisoners in Cuba, you saw the folks standing here this morning,” he continued. “If some people get slapped on the hand for the same crime and others go to federal prison, then we too have our own political prisons because politics more than the crime politics of race and class. And in that sense, many of us have sisters and brothers who are political prisoners. We are about to pray to a man who was a political prisoner.”

Will the Supreme Court ignore the stolen election? By Robert Arvay

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/will_the_supreme_court_ignore_the_stolen_election.html

Remember the famous football game?  It wasn’t just a pass-interference infraction that caused the controversy.  It was blatant.  It was seen on live television by millions of football fans.  The pass defender virtually crawled up on top of the back of the intended receiver before the ball reached either player.  The referee saw it, right squarely in front of himself.  There was no doubt that, because of the required penalty, the game would therefore soon be won by the passing team, the team that had been illegally interfered with.

But the referee called it an incomplete pass, no interference, no penalty, in effect ending the game in favor of the team that had committed the infraction.  In football, this is referred to as a non-call.

When millions of people see a rules violation in football, and when the violation is permitted to go unpenalized, there is controversy, anger, and much discussion, after which all is soon forgotten.

When the same thing happens in a presidential election, when millions of people see the steal, and when the legislatures and courts do nothing, it is called corruption.  More than that, it is corruption so deep, so pervasive and widespread, that we are at a loss for words.

It now appears possible that Joe Biden will successfully steal the presidency from the voters.  As ludicrous as that sounds, the reality is slowly beginning to sink in.  There is no shortage of evidence; there is no lack of witnesses.  Worse yet, the consequences of the crime we are all witnessing will not be merely one team winning and the other losing.  It may well be the end of the republic, and for those who are witnessing it, there is no hyperbole in that foreboding.

Google/YouTube is erasing all evidence of election fraud By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/googleyoutube_is_erasing_all_evidence_of_election_fraud.html

Google/YouTube didn’t try to be subtle. It announced on Wednesday that it would delete any videos that so much as mentioned the word “fraud” in connection with Joe Biden’s patently fraudulently ascension to the top of the ticket in the days after the November 3 election. The implications of this are so enormous it’s currently difficult to assimilate all of them, let alone understand what needs to be done to hang onto American liberty.

You cannot discuss what Google just did without first turning to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he wrote as a warning about the dangers of a modern totalitarian government. The book’s protagonist, Winston Smith, is a member of Big Brother’s party who works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth.

In fact, there is no “truth” in Oceania. Instead, the only “truth” was Big Brother’s perpetual perfection. In his job, Winston received messages telling him to find locate past predictions from Big Brother that events had proven to be wrong. He was responsible for rewriting the statements (using a method similar to today’s speech recognition technology) to conform to actual events. Then,

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

America’s Forlorn Hope of a Quiet Life John O’Sullivan

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/12/americas-forlorn-hope-of-a-quiet-life/

Almost the oddest feature of the US election result—which as I write is a Joe Biden victory with a very small question mark attached—is the complacency with which centrist opinion, the media, Wall Street, moderate Democrats and establishment Republicans have greeted it. One might have expected that the election of an undistinguished seventy-seven-year-old hack politician of the Left, whose vice-president is a leftist of a more radical temper, would have made the possessing classes at least a little apprehensive, especially in conditions of civil disorder, pandemic and economic anxiety.

Instead, when the media jumped the gun by certifying Biden’s election as president-elect while the votes of five states were still being counted, there were street carnivals of rejoicing in New York and other hubs of urban America but also quiet satisfaction in the suites of America too. Wall Streeters joined Republican consultants in congratulating America on achieving an almost perfect political compromise: a radical Democrat president restrained from doing anything by a Senate in safe Republican hands. And an almost mystically united coalition of the media, corporate America, Big Tech, journals of opinion and independent commentators welcomed the result, called for all sides but especially Republicans to set aside things said in anger, and prayed for the new president.

God must have been pleased, if only because he was hearing from some of those in the congregation for the first time ever.

But this “era of good feelings” proved to be very short as eras go. That wasn’t because President Trump refused to concede until the courts had pronounced on the disputed vote counts in key swing states. Trump was denounced on this score (essentially for not being a good sport), but he was perfectly entitled to defend his legal right to a fair election.

DOJ Suspended Hunter Biden Investigation During Election: Now Back On Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/12/doj-suspended-hunter-biden-investigation-during-daniel-greenfield/

We already knew Hunter Biden was under investigation.

Remember that laptop story the media buried? The laptop was taken by the FBI. The case number suggested money laundering.  But, according to Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller, the investigation may actually go back to 2018. 

According to a Hunter Biden statement released by the Biden-Harris campaign, he only learned about this for the first time yesterday. That seems wildly implausible.

But if you parse the statement, that’s not what he’s really saying.

“I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs.:

Read that like a lawyer and it actually says that Hunter Biden learned for the first time that the office told his lawyers yesterday that they were investigating his taxes.

Which is to say, he learned for the first time yesterday the message that was passed on yesterday. In short, it’s meaningless, but meant to sound like it’s coming as a surprise to him.

Former VP Joe Biden’s statement says that he’s proud of his son. Unclear which part he’s proud of more, the drugs, the foreign dealings, or having a baby with a stripper.

Or an official investigation.

There is an interesting tidbit from CNN though, two actually…

After pausing in the months before the election, federal authorities are now actively investigating the business dealings of Hunter Biden, a person with knowledge of the probe said…

That would mean the probe was shut down during the election.

Jim Jordan: Trump Shouldn’t Concede, Everyone ‘Instinctively’ Knows Election Has Problems By Jack Phillips

https://www.theepochtimes.com/jim-jordan-trump-shouldnt-concede-everyone-in

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) called on President Donald Trump not to concede the Nov. 3 election.

In response to a statement on Newsmax about whether he should, Jordan said, “No, of course not, and you remember this is a president [who] gets things done.”

“This is a president who does what he told the American people he was going to do, accomplishes what he was elected to do and this is just one more example of him getting something done that’s valuable and important to the country,” Jordan said.

Going further, Jordan said that “instinctively, everyone knows there are problems with this election.”

Since Nov. 3, Trump said that the election was stolen from him and has mounted a legal campaign to overturn the results in several states. Meanwhile, his lawyers have lobbied the state legislatures and governors to either not certify the results of the election or for state lawmakers to reclaim their constitutional authority to call electors.

The Epoch Times has not called the election for either Trump or Democrat Joe Biden.

Jordan, the ranking Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that Trump performed too well in other places and among certain demographics to lose.