ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Why the Defeatism? By J. Robert Smith

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/why_the_defeatism.html

“Whatever the president chooses to do, the stubborn facts remain.  This assault on our liberties is unprecedented and must be countered and defeated.  We will fight because we must.    ”

Millions of patriots have fight in them as the country confronts the greatest threat to the Republic since the Civil War.  Historic elections fraud, centered on the presidential contests, involving gross criminality make it so. 

Whereas many patriots are ready to fight to restore the rule of law and our liberties, others express gloom and defeat.  The fix is in, they claim.  Should Trump retain the White House, perhaps there’s a chance to stave off scheming globalists, ruthless leftists, and jaded establishment factions, though that comes with a steep price: national convulsions.  If Trump doesn’t secure a second term, then all is lost, they bemoan.  The powerful cabal that Biden fronts will run the board over 48 months.  A long, dark night will descend on America.   

Here’s a modest proposal: Wars aren’t over until they’re fought.  Assuredly, victories aren’t givens, but, most often, neither are defeats.  And it isn’t unheard of that the victors are underdogs.  So, if you consider Patriot America – better than half by my reckoning — the underdog in this fight, don’t give up — or as Sam Adams once enjoined, “Nil Desperandum.” 

From Self-Educated American, July 15, 2010:

Human nature being what it is, patriotic fervor tends to come and go.

In 1772, when it seemed to be more going than coming, James Warren reported to Samuel Adams from Plymouth about the towns he had been canvassing: “They are dead,” he lamented, “and the dead can’t be raised without a miracle.”

“Nil desperandum” (Never despair), Adams reminded his friend. “That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead. And where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Silent Crisis: The Threat of Mass Illiteracy Jason Landless

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/12/the-silent-crisis-the-threat-of-mass-illiteracy/

“There are alarming implications for what could happen to our freedoms if we witness the emergence of a political and legal class who can function with virtually no scrutiny from a population that is too illiterate and therefore too disengaged to understand the language of power.”

Despite enormous efforts, despite a battery of programs and remedial regimes and the emergence of an entire sub-industry of school consultants and marketeers, the capacity to read and write across the English-speaking world shows evidence of steep decline. This should be a cause for community concern. Poor literacy is strongly associated with anti-social behaviour. Very literate people seldom enter the prison system, which suggests that widespread literacy is part of a good inoculation against criminality.

In most Western societies, the prison population has the highest concentration of illiteracy. In an interview with the Shannon Trust, a charity that promotes reading in United Kingdom jails, the journalist Stephen Moss was told that 50 per cent of British prisoners are functionally illiterate. The Literacy Project Foundation in the United States estimates 85 per cent of juvenile offenders have trouble reading, while other research estimates the illiteracy rate in American jails to be at least 75 per cent.

In 2015, the ABC reported that only 40 per cent of Victoria’s prison population had sufficient literacy to cope independently in the workforce. Or, put around the other way, 60 per cent of Victoria’s prisoners cannot read and write well enough to cope in most workplaces.

Lower literacy is related to poorer life choices, worse health, shorter lifespans and poverty. On a grander measure of human value, illiteracy denies people the ability to participate fully in their society. For at least a hundred years, basic literacy has been the necessary qualification for virtually all useful employment and for meaningful community involvement.

Literacy—sufficient to understand and produce complex texts—is even more important for our future. Fluent literacy is essential for citizens in any intellectual democracy that wishes to flourish. Since the beginning of popular democracy, the system has been safeguarded by vigilant citizens. The strength and stability of a democracy rest on the ability of its citizens to debate, understand and engage with complex ideas. Such engagement requires literacy above a basic standard. If much of modern political discourse seems to be emotional, visceral and simplistic, it may well reflect the inability of many in the electorate to handle complex ideas.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Year of Lies The lesson of 2020 is to never yield to the politics of science or the corruption of politics, to be not afraid of organizations that assail the public or mobs that organize to assault the public. By Bill Asher

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/30/a-year-of-lies/

WHO agrees with whom it serves: the Chinese Communist Party. About this rule, it is impossible to deny—it is unreasonable to doubt—that the World Health Organization serves the world’s worst rulers. About this fact, we have proof. We have a year-old message from Taiwan about the virus now known as COVID-19. We have an inquiry that now reads like a record of inquest. We have a record that now reads like a requiem, where votaries live in darkness and votives flicker and die before a veil of ignorance. 

Before us lies the history of 2020, of a missive of truth versus a big red book of lies. Before us lies the history of lives lost during a year-long march by Beijing to conquer Western culture without firing a shot; without developing a shot to save the life of a single Westerner, either. Before us lies more of the same unless we remove our masks, if only for a moment, so the world may hear us.

Whether what we say lasts on paper is less important than our belief in certain everlasting truths, that among these are the rightness of a people with an everlasting name and the glory of the righteous among the nations; that Jews and Christians refuse to rend their garments in mourning or mourn what they have no right to render unto anyone; that the Constitution exists to protect more than contracts; that the Declaration of Independence is a defense of existence itself; that our rights belong to a covenant with our Creator; that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is greater than the god that failed in Russia—and the god that will fail in China.

These rights transcend the will of tyrants and the tyranny of nonexistent majorities born on Election Day.

These rights endure because they are true, despite the forces of monopoly or the state’s monopoly on the use of force. Because these rights are true, they are the reason the world remembers an unknown rebel—Tank Man—rather than any member of a tank crew in Tiananmen Square. 

Tank Man stands above the legends of the battlefield. 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

BREAKING: Arizona Patriots Identify Between 160,000 to 400,000 ‘Phantom’ Ballots In Their State 2020 Election Results By Joe Hoft

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/breaking-arizona-patriots-identify-16000

As we noted earlier, a group of patriots in Arizona held a presentation this evening outside the capitol in Arizona.

Arizona Patriots held the rally at the Arizona state capitol and their accounts were shocking.

An estimate by these patriots in Arizona is that between 160,000 and 400,000 ‘phantom’ ballots are present in Arizona’s 2020 election results:

A number of ordinary Americans gave their stories of what they did and what they found out.  These modern day patriots had numerous stories of voter and election fraud.  One patriot for example, looked up the addresses for individuals who were listed as voting in the election and the name connected to the address in 11 cases was ‘Unknown Voter’:

The ballots in Arizona should be investigated.  Let’s hope they are wise enough to bring in Jevon Pulitzer to perform a review of the paper ballots in Maricopa County like he is now doing in Fulton County Georgia.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

We Need a Global Alliance to Defend Democracies by Richard Kemp

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16904/global-alliance-democracies

Under a Biden administration, many will be mindful of the Obama-era sell-out of America’s Middle East allies while accommodating the hostile Iranian ayatollahs.

Despite the optimistic indulgences by foreign policy experts and politicians over decades, China will not reform to allow normal coexistence within the world order but must instead be contained.

A modern alliance to resist today’s “attempted subjugation and outside pressures” should focus not only on China and the immediate challenges of 5G technology and supply chains, but also on the other major strategic threats to democratic states…. The object should not be… to lecture governments such as Hungary, Poland and Romania… While [Biden] may find their internal policies unpalatable, they pose no threat to any other country.

An interests-based, rather than ideological, alliance of strategically like-minded democracies should be built, each with the economic power and will to counter the authoritarian entities that oppose the Free World…. The alliance should work to push back the authoritarians and radicals across the economic, cultural, political, cyber and technological realms and deny them access to critical infrastructure and technology as well as opportunities for cultural subversion. It should also act to deter their further advances.

An important function of the proposed alliance would be to encourage member states, and their allies against authoritarian and extremist entities, to both provide adequate defence resources and where necessary adapt and modernise forces to ensure credible deterrence.

If a country lacks the confidence to stick up for its own values at home, how is it to robustly defend its virtues against those who wish to undermine them? This weakness in Western democracies has already allowed great strides across the world by China, Russia and jihadism and has helped create the situation that a D10 alliance is now urgently needed to repair.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Turks Celebrate Nazi Sympathizer by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16886/turkey-nazi-sympathizer

Sadly, Hüseyin Nihal Atsız still has many fans in Turkey.

“As the mud will not be iron even if it is put into an oven, the Jew cannot be Turkish no matter how hard he tries. Turkishness is a privilege, it is not granted to everyone, especially to those like Jews… If we get angry, we will not only exterminate Jews like the Germans did, we will go further….” — Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, in his National Revolution (Milli Inkılap) journal, 1934.

Today, behind many of Turkey’s continued aggressive policies such as its anti-Armenian, anti-Greek, anti-Cypriot, anti-Jewish, anti-Kurdish, anti-Western, and anti-Israeli activities lie the racist views of Atsız and the like. Millions of Turks have for decades been poisoned with Atsız’s Nazi-like views.

On December 16, the Istanbul metropolitan municipality, led by Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), named a park in Istanbul after Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, a racist anti-Semite and one of Turkey’s most prominent Nazi sympathizers. The request was made by members of another Turkish opposition party, “The Good Party” (Iyi). Atsız (1905-1975) was known for “measuring skulls” to determine people’s “amount of Turkishness.”

In March, a member of the Good Party presented a motion to the Istanbul municipal assembly, calling for a park in Istanbul’s Maltepe district to be named after Atsız. The motion stated that Atsız spent most of his life in the Köyiçi region of Maltepe, and the subject was put on the assembly’s agenda in November. After the motion was passed by the assembly, the park in the Yalı Neighborhood officially received Atsız’s name.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia Senate Panel Requests Forensic Audit of Fulton County Absentee Ballots By Petr Svab

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/georgia-senate-subcommittee-requests-forensic-audit-of-fulton-county-absentee-ballots_3638568.html

Georgia Senate’s Election Law Study Subcommittee unanimously passed a motion during a Dec. 30 hearing to request an audit of absentee ballots in Fulton County.

The senators are asking the state’s largest county to make the ballots “available for inspection” through a method outlined during the hearing by digital ID systems inventor Jovan Pulitzer.

Pulitzer suggested all absentee ballots in the state of Georgia be forensically examined and fraudulent ones identified in just a matter of hours. He called on state officials to allow the examination.

Officials in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment on the subcommittee motion.

“Fulton County did not participate in today’s hearing,” county spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said in an email to The Epoch Times. “We will continue to collaborate with the Secretary of State and General Assembly as we execute elections in compliance with all applicable state and federal laws.”

Georgia is one of the states where election results are being contested by the campaign of President Donald Trump and others. The current count in the state shows former Vice President Joe Biden ahead by some 12,000 votes.

The state has conducted manual and machine recounts, and an absentee ballot signature match audit in one county. These uncovered some issues and irregularities, but not enough to flip the results.

The brunt of the fraud allegations has been aimed at the heavily Democratic Fulton County, which includes Atlanta.

One of the county’s polling managers previously told state lawmakers that she opened a box of mail-in ballots with a batch of 110 that were “pristine” and not folded, indicating that they were never put in secrecy envelopes, as is required.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

New York Republican Keeps Lead in the Nation’s Last Uncalled House Race

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-york-republican-keeps-lead-in-the-nations-last-uncalled-house-race_3638217.html

The Republican challenger of the last undecided Congressional seat has regained her lead over the Democratic incumbent in a race that remains on razor’s edge.

Claudia Tenney, who held New York’s 22nd Congressional District seat for a single term and narrowly lost reelection in 2018 to Rep. Anthony Brindisi, said Wednesday that she is leading by just 29 votes.

Tenney’s small but widening advantage came after Oneida County finished its canvassing of about 1,800 affidavit ballots that were previously left uncounted. Those ballots were included in the recount under a Dec. 8 order from state Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte.

The completion of Oneida County’s tally marks the end of the counting across the NY 22nd, nearly two months after the general election. As of Wednesday, the unofficial results for the district, which covers all or part of eight upstate New York counties, have Tenney leading with 155,862 votes and Brindisi with 155,833.

The contest, however, won’t be officially concluded until early next year after DelConte’s ruling on whether some 2,000 ballots, which are being contested by the Tenney and Brindisi campaigns, should be included or tossed away from the final count. That means when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, the NY 22nd won’t have a representative in the House.

The seat for Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District will also remain open due to the recent death of Republican Rep.-elect Luke Letlow, leaving the new House with 222 Democrats and 210 Republicans.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Hester Prynne Arrives by Andrew I. Fillat

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/30/hester-prynne-arrives/

There are many examples of scarlet-letter-like labels, which are used as a cudgel to exercise fascistic control of expression.

The Nathaniel Hawthorne character, branded with a scarlet “A” for her adultery, is becoming a recognizable paradigm in today’s highly charged American society. The use of labelling, perhaps more aptly described as branding (as in cattle), has become a method of punishment for those who disagree with an ideology and effective blackmail to force others into compliance.

Labels – sexist, racist, homophobe, etc. – are now the currency of social justice enforcement and wokeness activists. They no longer limit branding to actual acts of discrimination. For them, it is not enough to assure that opportunities, whether jobs, school slots, social positions, or the like are available to anyone based on relevant capability, experience, and commitment, without regard to identity.

These activists not only demand special consideration based on identity (a topic for another day), but they are also exploiting our various biases as leverage to create guilt or fear of disagreement. That those biases may be based on experience or reasoned learning does not matter. The threat of “outing” a real or claimed bias and associating it with a defamatory label is used as a cudgel to exercise fascistic control of expression.

Today’s most potent weapon for activists is to threaten someone with the label “racist” even when there is no tangible act to support it. The supposed justification for the label may be based on a presumed bias, a distorted interpretation, exaggeration, or extrapolation of one’s statements, or even by imputing the meaning of silence. The latter evokes the case of Sir Thomas More, who was beheaded by Henry VIII solely for his silence’s implied disapproval of the king becoming head of the church to declare his own marriage annulment.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

DOJ Adviser Says 368,000 Fraudulent ‘Excess Votes’ Tipped Election to Joe Biden By Matt Margolis

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/12/30/doj-adviser-says-368000-fraudulent-excess-votes-tipped-election-to-joe-biden-n1293011

John Lott, who was hired by the Justice Department in October as senior adviser for Research and Statistics at the Office of Justice Programs, has published a study concluding that as many as 368,000 “excess votes” tipped the election outcome to favor Joe Biden in two consequential battleground states.

“Increased fraud can take many forms: higher rates of filling out absentee ballots for people who hadn’t voted, dead people voting, ineligible people voting, or even payments to legally registered people for their votes,” reads the study’s summary. “The estimates here indicate that there were 70,000 to 79,000 ‘excess’ votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania.”

The best estimate shows an unusual 7.81% drop in Trump’s percentage of the absentee ballots for Fulton County alone of 11,350 votes, or over 80% of Biden’s vote lead in Georgia. The same approach is applied to Allegheny County in Pennsylvania for both absentee and provisional ballots. The estimated number of fraudulent votes from those two sources is about 55,270 votes.

The study aimed to quantify how large of a problem voter fraud and other election irregularities were in the 2020 election. “The process is applicable to other states where precinct-level data is available on voting by absentee and in-person voting,” explains the study’s introduction.

Lott concludes that the discrepancies in absentee voting are not likely to have been caused by a shift by Democrats to vote absentee because of the pandemic, as the study controlled for in-person voting.