RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/ballothavesting_operation_busted_in_orlando_florida.html

Ballot harvesting, according to the California Democrats who’d like to take it national, is an innocent practice where union members and activists, some of them illegally present in the country, do voters the favor, see, of helping voters fill out their ballots and then collecting those ballots for them so that they need never go to the polls. They call it “a new service.” It’s part of their “make every vote count” agenda, and who could be against that?

But out in Florida, where there’s still some semblance of objectivity, investigators found another story.

According to the Washington Times:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security is requesting a criminal investigation into charges of ballot harvesting in Orlando, a Democratic stronghold in the critical swing state.

Cynthia Harris, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for District 6 commissioner in Orange County, which includes Orlando, provided a sworn complaint to the election crimes office, alleging left-leaning organizations have been perpetrating a scheme to encourage residents in black neighborhoods to apply for mail-in ballots and to fill out those ballots, which she said have been collected by paid canvassers, and sometimes altered, all in violation of state law.

In an interview with The Washington Times, Ms. Harris said she has video evidence of paid ballot harvesters operating in Orlando neighborhoods in both 2014 and 2017, and that the scheme has been going on for decades, continuing through the 2020 election and the 2022 primary.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/brewing-election-integrity-storm-pa-over-250k-ballots-sent-voters
More than 250,000 ballots have been mailed to Pennsylvania voters without their identities being verified, according to state data collected by election integrity group Verity Vote.

On Tuesday, 15 Pennsylvania state legislators sent a letter to acting Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Leigh Chapman regarding unverified ballots sent to voters. As of Thursday, state data show that more than 250,000 ballots have been mailed to voters without verifying their identification.

The legislators noted that during a state House of Representatives committee meeting in September, Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions Jonathan Marks testified that there is no identification requirement for voter registration in the state but that it is required for mail-in ballots.

Marks was asked by state Rep. Francis Ryan about “the large number of requests submitted to the Social Security Administration Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system.” Marks explained that the HAVV systems were being used to verify Social Security numbers for mail ballot applications.

However, the deputy secretary added that if someone submits an invalid Pennsylvania Department of Transportation ID number or if the last four digits of their Social Security number cannot be verified for a mail ballot application, then the counties must still send the ballot to the voter without the ID verification. Marks also said that “the ballot doesn’t count unless the voter provides a valid form of ID.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/27/fetterman-debate-disaster-reveals-both-democrat-hypocrisy-and-medias-shame/

It is difficult to describe just how disastrous Tuesday evening’s Pennsylvania Senate debate performance was for Democratic candidate (and current Keystone State Lt. Gov.) John Fetterman. In the course of one incredibly revealing and frankly painful hourlong debate, Fetterman—the victim of a stroke from May 13, just four days before his primary win over U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.)—was exposed as still struggling mightily to regain his full cognitive abilities, and thus wholly unfit to serve Pennsylvanians in what was once considered “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

It should go without saying that, like every decent American, I wish Fetterman the swiftest convalescence possible under his difficult circumstances. But it is also true that Fetterman’s stroke befell him before the primary—just a few days before, but before the primary date nonetheless. Fetterman’s inner circle, including his ambitious social activist wife, thus had a few days to consult trusted—that is, not Democratic Party donor—doctors to soberly gauge his continued candidate viability. While we should all feel bad for Fetterman, then, it must be said that a more altruistic and less cynical political candidate would have likely dropped out after a debilitating stroke such as that which Fetterman suffered. Democrats had a reasonable alternative ready to go, in  Lamb.

But now, the Pennsylvania Senate race, which was already a nail-biter, is Dr. Mehmet Oz’s race to lose. And in addition to Fetterman’s glaring cognitive deficiencies, two other things were also exposed for the whole nation to see in the course of that cringeworthy hour of television Tuesday night: the Democrats’ hypocrisy on how mental and cognitive fitness concerns ought to impact the viability of a U.S. Senate candidacy, and how shameful and loathsome the mainstream media’s monthslong cover-up of Fetterman’s health woes is. In fact, the two aspects of this scandalous story fit together quite neatly.

The Democrats’ stances on the Pennsylvania and Georgia Senate races are impossible to reconcile with each other. In Georgia, Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, a former football star who has a checkered personal past, has been very open about his past struggles with mental illness. In fact, Walker literally wrote a book about it over a decade ago, titled Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Walker’s past struggles, about which he has been fully transparent, have often come up during the course of his close race against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). The Democrats’ basic stance on Walker—which, notably, runs entirely contrary to their general pro-“forgiveness” stance on “criminal justice reform”—is not to forgive, not to show grace and to tarnish him as an irredeemable candidate.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3707603-democrats-democracy-alarmism-flops-with-voters/

Several months ago, Democrats rolled the dice. They chose the issues they thought would help them prevail in the midterm elections, and they chose badly. Some of their decisions were, to be fair, inescapable. When the Supreme Court handed down its startling decision on Roe v. Wade, Democrats grasped the opportunity to burrow in on a social issue they hoped would energize their base, and especially young women.

But their other picks were entirely voluntary and, ultimately, wrong-headed. They decided to continue hammering former President Trump for every conceivable misstep, and to prolong the Jan. 6 hearings to remind voters not only that Trump was a menace but that his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election proved our very democracy is in peril.

This proved a bust. Most voters made up their minds about the riots at the Capitol months ago; the endless partisan congressional hearings into the matter have attracted a dwindling audience. Millions of Americans considered the hearings a political show trial, with no due process and no balance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) departed from 200 years of precedence by not allowing the minority party to choose its own panel members. That was a mistake.

Meanwhile, the Biden White House delivered such a disastrous performance on the economy, the border, crime and inflation that Trump, despite his misdeeds, began to look better in hindsight. Ironically, he looked especially appealing because his social media presence was severely curtailed. Many voters began to forget why they rejected him in 2020.

Approval of the former president has actually increased while Speaker Pelosi’s chosen few rail on about the “insurrection” on Jan. 6. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, Trump beats Joe Biden. Oops.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2022/10/us-midterms-here-come-the-republicans/

Not long before I made the mistake last week of entrusting life and baggage to Philippine Airlines’ midweek flight from Melbourne to New York, a leftoid friend, one who pays far too much heed to the ABC, warned me that conservatives’ hope of the GOP sweeping both the House and Senate was likely to be dashed.

‘Well, yes, there’s always the possibility of massive electoral fraud, like in 2020,” I replied, all the while anticipating a heaved sigh of exasperation at my refusal to accept the absurdity of more Americans having voted for a dim and declining dodderer, a nailed plagiarist and serial fabulist, than for any other presidential candidate in American history. But that wasn’t what he meant.

“Abortion,” he said, “that will be the decider.”

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as they say, and skerricks of alleged insight gained from the mainstream media’s narratives can only further cloud the perceptions of those whose left eye is pressed to a faulty telescope on the wrong side of the Pacific. Still, as one of those folks who rate the ABC Australia’s “most trusted” news source, you can understand why my friend labours under the abortion misconception.

Thing is, the ABC seems only ever to seek the perspectives of donors to the Democratic Party. Take this report, for example, selected at random from the national broadcaster’s archives after a site search on ‘Trump’. Both of the quoted people, documentarian Nick Quested and Stephen Vladeck, are donors, as can be easily easily established by consulting the OpenSecrets.org website, which catalogues who gives what to whom and how much.

Likewise with this report, in which a certain Mark Graber, a Maryland law professor, has this to say of Trump and Republicans: “[It] may be that the Trump wing of the Republican party is starting to lose some steam … This will help a whole lot in removing Donald Trump from the American political scene. But it’s likely to be a very slow removal.”

Professor Graber — surprise! surprise! — is yet another leftist who puts his money where his heart is.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/26/noncitizen-voting-is-a-real-threat-to-democracy/

With a critical midterm election less than two weeks away, America is awash in rhetoric about voter suppression, election integrity, and “threats to democracy.” While those are serious issues, they have been invoked far too often lately by left-wing partisans as attack lines against opponents and to distract from their own political failures. Lost in the political spin and 24-hour cable news programming is a very real and underreported threat to our democracy: allowing noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.

Noncitizen voting has become a priority agenda item for the anti-borders Left, right up there with blocking wall construction, advocating sanctuary laws, and counting noncitizens in the U.S. census. 

The motivation should be obvious by now. A large pool of noncitizens, most of whom have no understanding of America’s founding principles, can be easily swayed to vote a certain way in critical races. At that point, the floodgates can be opened for a slew of radical laws most Americans would not support.

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but there is no such restriction for state or local elections. The activists have sought to exploit this gap as a first step to normalize noncitizen voting.

The effort to push through illegal alien voting is already underway and yielding results in deep-blue jurisdictions. Towns in Vermont, California, and Maryland currently allow noncitizen voting in local elections. The New York City Council had passed a law giving the right to vote in city elections to alien residents of the city who are permitted to work in the United States. A state court later struck down the law in June of this year.

The latest effort is taking place in our nation’s capital. The D.C. City Council passed a measure this month that would only require someone to live in the city for 30 days before registering to vote. The measure still requires a review by Congress and a signature from Mayor Muriel Bowser.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-democrats-are-losing-john-fetterman-mehmet-oz-fracking-pennsylvania-far-left-u-s-senate-11666821289?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Commentary on Tuesday night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate is mostly about Democrat John Fetterman’s unfortunate struggles communicating in the wake of his May stroke. But for our money the most telling moment was Mr. Fetterman’s response to a question about his previous opposition to fracking for natural gas. It sums up why the election tide is moving against Democrats and may cost them the House and Senate.

“I’ve always supported fracking,” Mr. Fetterman said when pressed by a moderator. He later added that, “I do support fracking and I don’t, I don’t—I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.”

His stumbles over his real position is understandable because his pro-fracking conversion, if that’s what it is, is recent. “I don’t support fracking at all and I never have,” Mr. Fetterman told a YouTube channel in 2018 when running for lieutenant governor. “And I’ve, I’ve signed the no fossil fuels money pledge. I have never received a dime from any natural gas or oil company whatsoever.”

In 2016 Mr. Fetterman said in a comment on Reddit that “I am not pro-fracking and have stated that if we did things right in this state, we wouldn’t have fracking.” He added that he had “signed the Food and Water Watch’s pledge to end fracking.” Republican Mehmet Oz hammered Mr. Fetterman on the old quotes in Tuesday’s debate.

https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-medias-cover-up-of-john-fetterman?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

It should now be crystal clear why Democrat John Fetterman refused to take part in more than a single debate with his Republican Senate rival, Mehmet Oz, and why Fetterman insisted on pushing that debate to just two weeks before Election Day—after at least 500,000 Pennsylvania voters had already voted.

Last night’s debate was an unmitigated disaster. 

A disaster for Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor—who appeared confused and could barely manage a coherent sentence, let alone a complete paragraph.

And a disaster for Pennsylvania voters, who didn’t get the tough, substantive debate they deserved, one that would have pushed Oz to explain, among other things, why he was distancing himself from Donald Trump (without whom he wouldn’t be the nominee); his position on abortion; China; and how he plans to bring down gas prices.

Oz had some solid talking points, but they were just that—talking points. But Fetterman lacked even those.

You can watch the whole debate here: