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The Democratic art of magical thinking Roger Kimball (From October 20)

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://spectator.us/democratic-art-magical-thinking-biden-2020/

I should clear up one thing straight away. I do not believe that Joe Biden is guilty of magical thinking. Magical thinking, though specious, is a form of thinking. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Joe Biden is not guilty of thinking of any kind, ergo, Joe Biden is not guilty of magical thinking. Quod erat demonstrandum.

But Biden’s supporters? Well, that is another matter altogether. There you see a wild efflorescence of magical thinking.

What is magical thinking? It is the irrational belief, rampant among primitive peoples and those exposed to too many woke college seminars, that our thoughts influence or ‘constitute’ reality.

In the present case, we see Biden’s supporters telling us, and through telling us, telling themselves, that their candidate is ahead in the polls and is therefore likely to win the election in November.

They omit to say that their polls are fantasy polls: that they are of registered, not likely, voters, that they oversample Democrats or suburban women, that they fail to factor in the phenomenon of the shy Trump voter, who fully intends to vote for the President but is not happy about advertising it to random pollsters.

Among some architects of this fantasy, there is a strategy. The idea is that by claiming something is true one can influence opinion, at least at the margins, and up the odds of its becoming true. In itself, this is not irrational. If you hear something often enough, not only do you remember it, you also begin to believe it.

That, anyway, is the theory. How does it work in practice? Pretty patchily, I’d say, and for confirmation I offer the spectacle of the late evening of November 8, 2016. Remember all those shattered faces at the Javits Center, home of the Hillary victory party that never was? There they were, etched with grief, moist-eyed, mute or maundering, sown with an incredulity that had not yet degenerated into rage. You saw something similar among the talking heads at CNN, MSNBC and the other major dispensers of Democratic propaganda. This couldn’t be happening. Recall the sad/funny footage of Ben Rhodes that night. It was a grief observed. ‘I, I can’t even…I c-can’t…I, I mean I c-can’t…I c-can’t put it into words…I don’t know what the words are…’

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

JANUARY 6 WILL BE VICE PRESIDENT PENCE’S BIGGEST DAY IN CONGRESS PDF

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

BY HONORARY JOSEPH E. SCHMITZ

_https://everylegalvote.com/assets/pdfs/January_6_2021_Will_Pence_s_Biggest_Day_in_

Joseph Edward Schmitz (born August 28, 1956) is an American lawyer, former inspector general of the United States Department of Defense and a former executive with Blackwater Worldwide. After working as a watchdog at the Pentagon for three and a half years, Schmitz resigned to return to the private sector.

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Notable & Quotable: Electors ‘It’s not that partisans of one side or another are more prone to accept conspiratorial claims.’

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-electors-11609537132

A Dec. 31 Twitter thread by law professor Jonathan Adler :

Having dealt with Ohio 2004 election truthers for many years, I find the revisionism about Sen. [Barbara] Boxer and the 31 House members who voted to reject Ohio’s electoral votes to be quite irksome.

One reason is that many of the arguments we hear this year—alleged statistical anomalies, sinister tabulation machines, etc.—are the same arguments folks made about Ohio in 2004, it was just different people making the same (absurd) claims.The biggest difference is that the 2004 objectors were largely on the fringe (though the ranking member on House Judiciary continued to push the conspiracy theory for years). In 2020, the President is on board, and party leaders are too quiet out of cowardice. It’s not that partisans of one side or another are more prone to accept conspiratorial claims. It’s that in 2020 political “leaders” have abdicated their responsibility to show leadership and check such tendencies within their tribe.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

NEW YEAR GREETINGS FROM RUTHFULLY YOURS-

Posted By on January 1st, 2021

T’WAS NEW YEAR’S EVE AFTER MONTHS OF DEPRIVATION

THERE WAS SCANT FUN OR JOY OR NATIONAL JUBILATION

THE DEMS TURNED AND TOSSED IN  THEIR BED

WITH VISIONS OF INDICTMENTS CAUSING THEIR DREAD

IN THEIR HEARTS THEY KNEW TWAS A TAINTED ELECTION

WITH A PATHETIC CLOWN AS THE ULTIMATE SELECTION

GLUM AND DISAPPOINTED I TRIED TO SLEEP

WITH SOME HOPE AND RESOLUTIONS TO KEEP

WHEN SUDDENLY I HEARD AN ENORMOUS CLATTER

I RAN TO THE WINDOW TO SEE WHAT WAS THE MATTER

FROM EVERY SINGLE CORNER OF OUR VAST NATION

PROTEST CAME IN EVERY MODE OF TRANSPORTATION

DONALD TRUMP JOINED THE RALLY LOOKING SERENE

WITH A BAG OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS INCLUDING VACCINE.

“KEEP AMERICA GREAT” PROCLAIMED THE CROWD

“YOU CAN’T STEAL ELECTIONS” I HEARD LOUD AND PROUD

WITH HOPE IN MY HEART AND A GLIMMER OF CHEER

I WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR .

RSK

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Patrick Byrne: China Is Taking Us Out From Within BY LI HAI

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/patrick-byrne-china-is-taking-us-out-from-within_36

Patrick Byrne, founder and former CEO of Overstock, said that China is “taking us out from within” during an interview with Dr. Jerome Corsi on Monday.

“The greatest way to fight a war, in the Chinese way of thinking, is not to have to fight at all. That’s what they’ve done here,” Byrne said.

Byrne studied Chinese history at Beijing Normal University from 1983 to 1984. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese studies from Dartmouth College.

“Though we spend a trillion dollars a year between our military and our intelligence, national security circles … that trillion dollars we have and we’ve built, you know, things that can stop all their planes and their missiles and all kinds of things. But we missed the one they use, which is not a fight at all, not firing a bullet or missile at all, but taking us out from within. And that’s what’s going on.”

Byrne pointed out that the Chinese regime is engaged in “a slow coup.”

“It’s a revolution. The stages of such a revolution are very well mapped out. We understand this. It’s demoralization, disorientation, crisis, then normalization: those four steps.”

“The demoralization is what happened this year with COVID,” Byrne continued.

“The disorientation is this kookiness we’ve been seeing for about six months,” Byrne said, referring to Antifa, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other things, such as buildings and police stations being lit on fire, and people being harassed for their political views while out dining.

“That’s all to disorient you. It’s to tell you, ‘You are not living in the America you thought you were living in,’” he said.

“The crisis is, clearly an imposter president has been stood up,” Byrne added in reference to the contested election results.

He asserted that Beijing only needed to secure six counties to steal the election.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Stunning turn of events in PA may lead to Trump victory By James Arlandson

Posted By on December 31st, 2020

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

On Dec. 28, Pennsylvania lawmakers concluded that “Numbers Don’t Add Up, Certification Of Presidential Results Premature and In Error” 

President Trump tweeted about it:

“Breaking News: In Pennsylvania there were 205,000 more votes than there were voters. This alone flips the state to President Trump.”

The key paragraphs from the PA lawmaker’s two-page statement:

A comparison of official county election results to the total number of voters who voted on November 3, 2020 as recorded by the Department of State shows that 6,962,607 total ballots were reported as being cast, while DoS/SURE system records indicate that only 6,760,230 total voters actually voted. Among the 6,962,607 total ballots cast, 6,931,060 total votes were counted in the presidential race, including all three candidates on the ballot and write-in candidates.

The difference of 202,377 more votes cast than voters voting, together with the 31,547 over- and under-votes in the presidential race, adds up to an alarming discrepancy of 170,830 votes, which is more than twice the reported statewide difference between the two major candidates for President of the United States. On November 24, 2020, Boockvar certified election results, and Wolf issued a certificate of ascertainment of presidential electors, stating that Vice President Joe Biden received 80,555 more votes than President Donald Trump.

The PA lawmakers have done their job (so far). Now what is the next step? These lawmakers need to recall the slate of electors and tell House and Senate that the election results cannot be ascertained in their state. They should probably hold a vote that overturns the certification of the awful election. The bottom line is that the slate of electors is not permitted to vote on Jan. 6. 

This reasonable and fair action may have a domino effect on the other embattled states, whose lawmakers should follow suit. If this happens, Trump will win in the Electoral College (I had erroneously stated that if no one reaches 270 votes, then the House decides.) Instead, the Twelfth Amendment states:  “[T]he votes shall then be counted…  The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President[.]”

But will PA legislatures, where the real power resides, do this? And will the other embattled states do the same? If so, then Trump (rightly) wins: 232 to 222. This is the best, constitutionally speaking, and probably the only real option remaining for Trump.

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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.”

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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.

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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.