One take:
The Wuhan lab origin theory of COVID is finally getting some respect…
…after having been “debunked” for such a long time.
I think when “debunked” is used by the MSM, the social media woke, and the left in general, it should now should be translated as “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
Bowling Alone revisited
I’m unfamiliar with the site and the author, but this article certainly is interesting. I’m curious what you all think of it. The title is “Bowling Alone: How Washington Has Helped Destroy American Civil Society and Family Life.”
I’m familiar with the original “bowling alone” thesis; the book was published in 2000. The article is written by someone else and is a much more recent piece, although I can’t find a date on it.
There’s a vote audit going on in Windham, NH
The town of Windham, NH is undergoing a voting audit. It involves a local contest that had been decided by 24 votes. But when officials performed a recount requested by the loser, they discovered not a slight change in votes but some large discrepancies (large in terms of the smallness of the town, that is). And strangely enough, all the corrections involved the Republicans gaining votes in the recount. And so a forensic audit is now going on to see why this may have occurred.
NH is somewhat unusual in its voting procedures. For one thing, NH has a small population. For another, the state uses all paper ballots although this year there were more mail-in ballots than usual. It also uses counting machines in which voters place the ballots themselves. Therefore there are always paper ballots that can be hand-counted and examined visually, if necessary.
The vote-counting machines used in Windham and about 85% of cities and towns in New Hampshire are one of the oldest models in circulation, with a memory chip that dates back to 1981, Hursti said.
“This device is predating the internet,” he said.
Later he added, “The technology is so old that the modern computer is unable to read it.”
While it’s outdated, Hursti said, the machine is harder to hack than more modern vote-counting machines because the paper ballots it counts provide backup.
This is the theory at the moment about what may have happened in Windham, and it could affect the whole state:
The work of closely examining each of Windham’s 10,000 ballots from the November 2020 election is expected to last three days, but auditors and volunteers at the secure audit facility in Pembroke could be inching closer to an explanation for the discrepancies.
“Something we strongly suspect at this juncture, based on various evidence, is that in some cases, fold lines are being interpreted by the scanners as valid votes,” said independent auditor Mark Lindeman.
Auditors said the scanners could be interpreting the fold lines as a vote when they go through a “vote target,” or a candidate’s name on the ballot. They said a lot of Windham’s ballots appear to have fold lines across the target of a Democratic state representative candidate.
“Wherever the fold happened to be was, I guess, most commonly through my name,” said the candidate, Kristi St. Laurent.
Auditors said that could explain why St. Laurent [who had requested the recount because of the closeness of the vote] lost 99 votes in the hand recount last year, while Republican candidates gained votes.
“Because if someone voted for all four Republican candidates and the ballot happened to have its fold line going through St. Laurent’s target, then that might be interpreted by the machines as an overvote, which would then subtract votes from each of those four Republican candidates,” said auditor Philip Stark. “Conversely, if there were not four votes already in that contest by the voter, a fold line through that target could have caused the machine to interpret it as a vote for St. Laurent.”
A discussion of the NH machines, in an article written before the election, can be found here. It’s really a very simple system and seemingly a trustworthy one – till now. It also has the advantage of going straight from voter to counter with no middleman involved:
The AccuVote optical reader has been part of Granite State elections since the early 1990s, when it was first accepted by the Secretary of State’s office.
It’s a 14-pound box that looks like an oversized laptop computer sitting on top of a collection bin. As each voter leaves the polling place, poll workers slip their ballot into the AccuVote slot and the machine bounces light off the paper. Sensors tally filled-in circles next to candidates’ names and then the ballot falls into the bin below the reader.
After polls close, the reader prints out the results, with all the paper ballots available for a recount.
Other technologies have come and gone over the years but AccuVote has remained, and today is still the state’s only legal ballot-counting technology…
The AccuVote readers have been involved in thousands of elections, giving polling officials experience in its operation, and in hundreds of recounts, giving experience in its reliability.
It’s also disconnected from the internet or other networks, making it very difficult to hack…
But old technology can be worrisome, too. The software for the AccuVote reader runs on WindowsXP, an operating system that hasn’t been supported by Microsoft since 2014, making it vulnerable to crashes. The machines themselves aren’t made anymore, so the provider has to buy old ones and cannibalize them for parts when repairs are needed…
“The more software that is contained, the more suspicious people become of their ability to properly count ballots,” Scanlan said. “We would probably have to come up with some kind of system to audit ballots after the fact.”
Regular audits after elections is a hot topic in New Hampshire. The Secretary of State’s office has long opposed them as an unnecessary expense but some advocates say they can help instill confidence in the election system. A bill before the House would allow voters in any AccuVote community to request a post-election audit, a request currently limited to when results are very close or somehow contested.
As I said, that was written before the 2020 election and all its woes.
Other states use the same system, but I haven’t been able to get a list of which ones. My guess is that they are small states such as New Hampshire.
In 2016 in New Hampshire, Republican Senator Kelley Ayotte was defeated for re-election to the US Senate by Maggie Hassan, who won narrowly by 1,017 votes. It’s not clear whether that year the ballot folds were placed in such a way that it would have affected that election (and I’m pretty sure that folds only affected mail-in ballots anyway, and I imagine that in 2016 there were fewer of those than in 2020). I certainly haven’t seen any discussion of the 2016 NH election of Hassan in light of what happened in Windham in 2020, nor of how many mail-in ballots were received that year. So it’s certainly possible there is no way such a problem would have affected that election, even with such a small margin. But I’d certainly like to know – because in 2020, the Senate was won so narrowly by the Democrats that an Ayotte win in 2016 would have given the Republicans the majority in the Senate right now.
I haven’t seen any discussion of whether the Windham audit involves any re-counting of presidential votes for 2020, but I doubt it. I wonder whether the fold went through any of the presidential candidates’ names; haven’t read anything about that, either. At any rate, in NH this year Biden won by 7 points and Shaheen (the other Democratic senator in NH) won by 15, so it’s unlikely this fold problem affected those races in that particular state – although who knows?
Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it? Not that we had much confidence left.
Open thread 5/21/21
The bird’s not a fan of low-flow showers:
The official Capitol Police letter that wasn’t
It appears rather Ratheresque.
You probably remember Rathergate, the fake letter about Bush and his National Guard service that became a big big story prior to the 2004 election. Somehow, despite everything, those who accepted the letter at face value never really owned up to their stupidity and/or culpability, and Hollywood decided to make near-heroes out of them in a movie.
The moral of the tale is that a fake story can get believed by a lot of people if the perps never quite fully admit it’s not authentic. Just hedge around the issue if discovered, and concede that you made a few mistakes while claiming that the story might nevertheless be true in its essence.
So now we have the Capitol Police letter:
Yesterday…Capitol Hill was abuzz, as a letter circulated that the United States Capitol Police (USCP) was harshly critical of the Republican members and senators opposing the forming of a commission to look into the Capitol riot in January. It was a scathing rebuke against political posturing, and perfectly illuminated the GOP as hypocritical and dodging the inflammatory issue.
…[T]his letter emerged from the offices of Rep. Jamie Raskin, and it was distributed and broadcast by the press. Politico’s Olivia Beavers was one who — early on — got the letter spread around, but by 5:00 pm, trouble began to emerge. Some intrepid reporters actually decided to act like journalists and thought to contact the USCP about the letter. They received an official statement from the group declaring by practice they never make official comments on political activity…
Throughout the afternoon and into the night, through Cohen, we see the evolution of the story, beginning with the disavowal from the USCP until, into the evening, when the origination of this letter has dwindled down to just a solitary police officer — who remains anonymous and has no way of being verified as a legitimate source…
But even by this point, when this story should be completely laughed out of the Beltway, Cohen still tells us as a conclusion, “It’s also important that this officer’s view be taken seriously.”
…The letter was clearly not an official dispatch as it is un-dated, signed merely with “Proud Members Of The United States Capitol Police,”; it bears no official names or offices, and is attributed to a lone individual who is being kept off the record. Pretty much everything surrounding this letter is suspect, and there should be an investigation into the involvement of Rep. Raskin to find out who was trying to pass off this note as an official, USCP. document.
The larger story of course is the commission itself, and the fact that 35 Republicans in the House joined the Democrats in voting for it and yet Senate Republicans are coming out against it.
Theft in California: Annals of completely predictable logical consequences
How astounding – if you eliminate penalties for certain crimes, you will get more of those crimes. And there will be consequences to that, as well:
By a margin of 60 to 40 percent, the idiots of California basically legalized shoplifting. Proposition 47, which passed in 2014, no longer made it a felony to steal if the value of what you steal doesn’t exceed $950. It’s also no longer a felony to receive stolen property valued at less than $950. And so…
Instead of being punished as a felon, you are hit with a misdemeanor, and in many cases not even that.
As you can imagine, this has turned into a free-for-all for shoplifters and a stone cold nightmare for retailers.
The result?
According to this headline in the far-left San Francisco Chronicle… “Out of control’: Organized crime drives S.F. shoplifting, closing 17 Walgreens in five years.”…
“This has been out of control,” said Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who held a hearing Thursday with retailers, police, the district attorney and probation departments. “People are scared to go into these stores — seniors, people with disabilities, children. It’s just happening brazenly. We can’t just as a city throw up our hands and say this is OK. We have to come up with solutions.”
How was Proposition 47 passed? In the usual leftist manner, by giving it a pretty name and dressing it up as helping matters and guaranteeing the opposite of what it would almost inevitably lead to:
The measure was also referred to by its supporters as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.
Let that sink in for a moment. Orwell knew exactly what he was talking about.
How did they sell the idea that this would lead to safer neighborhoods and schools? Here’s how [emphasis mine]:
The measure’s main effects were to convert many nonviolent offenses, such as drug and property offenses, from felonies to misdemeanors. These offenses include shoplifting, writing bad checks, and drug possession. The measure also required that money saved as a result of the measure would be spent on “school truancy and dropout prevention, victim services, mental health, and drug abuse treatment, and other programs designed to keep offenders out of prison and jail.”
It’s a bit parallel to the idea that police officers can be replaced by social workers to deal with volatile and potentially violent situations. The appeal is to the idea that prevention will work and we know how to do it, and that either/or is a better way to approach it than combining both penalties and attempts at prevention.
Well, it did reduce the prison population, apparently. No surprise there. And that saved the state money. Quality of life? Not so much – at least, not for the regular non-offending population who might want to go to a convenient Walgreens, or feel safe going into stores in general.
Predictions from the bill’s opponents:
Opponents of the measure include Mark A. Peterson, the District Attorney of Contra Costa County, who wrote before its passage that the measure “would make our neighborhoods and schools less safe”. It was also criticized by Nancy O’Malley, the District Attorney of Alameda County, who said it would “expose Californians to significant harm” and called it a “Trojan horse”.[
What happened:
Numerous media outlets have continued to report an increase in retail theft related to the passage of Prop 47. Large retailers Safeway, Target, Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies reported in 2016 that shoplifting increased from 15 percent to (in some cases) over 50 percent since voters approved Proposition 47. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2017 that the California Supreme Court ruled that a person convicted of a felony for stealing a car may have that conviction reduced to a misdemeanor if the vehicle was worth no more than $950, and in 2018 that researchers found Prop 47 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting and other thefts. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2018 that Prop. 47 led to a rise in the larceny theft rate of about 9 percent compared to the 2014 rate.
By 2019, organized retail theft was on the rise; police and store owners attributed it to Prop 47. Fox News reported that post Prop 47 both shoplifters and fencers operated openly and with impunity, with both criminals and storekeepers aware that selective enforcement policies mean police largely ignore reports of shoplifting, or respond too slowly. President of the California Retailers Association Rachel Michelin stated that thieves will bring in calculators to ensure that they do not go over the $950 limit and that “one person will go into a store, fill up their backpack, come out, dump it out and go right back in and do it all over again.” She also reported that out-of-state crime rings use children as they are even less likely to be prosecuted, and that even when police make arrests, charges are dropped or downgraded by the district attorney.
Safe Neighborhoods and Schools, indeed.
Biden can’t even steal a joke right
[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”.]
Turns out that Joe Biden’s Coast Guard joke that fell flat wasn’t even originally his, it was Reagan’s. Reagan delivered it a whole lot better, and without the insults:
There are many astounding things about the mess we’re in today, but one of the most astounding is that the same people who thought Trump was not just evil but stupid – and didn’t get his genuinely funny jokes – are pretending to think that Biden is completely in charge of his faculties as well as witty.
Actually, come to think of it, they thought Reagan was stupid, too.
Now, you might say that this Biden screw-up is a minor event in the scheme of things, and I think you’d be right. But it’s also symbolic of the point we’ve reached. There is a certain farcical element, to be sure. If someone had scripted a president like Biden, it would be played as an “Airplane” type of comedy. But this is real, and this mentally deficient person is either our president and in charge, or partly in charge, or not at all in charge and shadow unknowns are in charge – and half the country either doesn’t notice or care.
And that’s the same half who hated Reagan as a half-wit (an evil half-wit, actually), and hated Trump as another evil half-wit only without Reagan’s charm.
We are in a surreal zone, and part of the unreality is the different perceptions of a reality that seems obvious.
Open thread 5/20/21
I can’t resist posting another clip from the movie “Midnight Run”:
Anti-Jewish attacks on the rise
Well, of course.
Israel’s fight against Hamas has again reached American shores. While cities all over Europe continue to report alarming spikes in physical attacks against Jews —citizen broadcasts via the Twitterverse show the same sort of assaults happening here.
“Auhorities are investigating whether an attack on diners that occurred outside a Beverly Grove restaurant late Tuesday night was a Jewish hate crime.
“The brawl occurred a little before 10 p.m. outside Sushi Fumi in the 300 block of North La Cienega Boulevard.
“Witnesses said a mob of pro-Palestinians attacked a group of Jewish men who were dining at the restaurant. Cell phone video showed a group of men get out of the car and start to attack them while yelling racial slurs.”
And by the way, shouldn’t that phrase “a Jewish hate crime” be “an anti-Jewish hate crime”?
Meanwhile, the New Yorker Union tweeted its solidarity “with Palestinians from the river to the sea who went on a 24-hour strike yesterday for dignity and liberation.” The tweet has since been deleted.
The phrase “from the river to the sea” has long represented the wish to obliterate the state of Israel. Does whoever at the New Yorker was responsible for the tweet know this (fool or knave)? Or is it merely an example of the abysmal state of ignorance of echo-chamber journalism these days?
Oh, and Democrats in the House decided not to vote on a bill sanctioning Hamas:
By a vote of 217-209, the House rejected a bid to bring a bill to the floor that would have applied sanctions against the terror group Hamas. The sanctions targeted foreign individuals and governments that assist Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Both organizations are terror groups so designated by the State Department…
The last time the bill was considered in the House, it passed unanimously. Democrats may very well have refused to bring up the measure because so many of their members are pro-Hamas and the Democratic leadership in the House didn’t want the embarrassment of betraying a close ally in the middle of a war.
Is the “close ally” of the Democrats Israel or Hamas?
Anything Biden does is perfectly okay with the press
Imagine if Donald Trump had jokingly threatened to murder journalists standing in front of him. They probably wouldn’t have laughed. Yet that’s what Joe Biden did on Tuesday and the assembled reporters just chuckled at the funny threat. While test driving an electric Ford F-150, ABC’s Cecilia Vega broke up the adoring queries about the car by actually asking, “Mr. President, can I ask you a quick question about Israel before you drive away since it’s so important?”
Biden, who was sitting in a truck at the time, sneered, “No, you can’t. Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it. I’m only teasing.” The off-camera journalists awkwardly snickered in reply. Biden then drove off, having threatened the press and then not answered the serious question.
As commenter “George_Banner” writes:
Leftoxenomorphs are very adept at infecting, getting promoted to leadership positions, gatekeeping, spreading the infection, waiting out old timers that go into retirement and / or firing them by phony accusations and persecutions, killing an institution and then wearing its skin for camouflage, pretense, propaganda, power and influence.
The institution doesn’t exist anymore.
It died.
It died of a leftoxenomorphism infection that spread and killed it.
There’s nothing left in the institution that is not leftoxenomorph.
It’s just the skin moving like on its own but inside there’s only leftoxenomorph maggots.
It’s former nature, gone. Its life extinguished.
That has happened to the press, among many other institutions.
Of course, one could argue that the objectivity and fairness of the press was always an illusion. And there’s something to that. But I have observed in the last two decades or so that things have gotten far worse in that regard.
[NOTE: In line with the topic of press bias and how it has affected the world, I noticed this new book called The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History. Sounds interesting.]
What’s going on these days in Pennsylvania voting?
Commenter “Steph” writes:
There were two ballot questions in yesterday’s election [in] PA that would limit the emergency powers of the Governor. Very much a slam dunk to vote YES on both of these, especially in a state where Wolf is the governor and Rachel Levine was the Secretary of Health advising Wolf during the lockdowns (while moving his/her mother out of a care facility even as she directed nursing homes to take in COVID patients).
The result in my once red county? Election Day Yes – 52000, Election Day No – 49000, Mail In Yes – 9500, Mail In No – 45000. Why in hell are there nearly 55000 mail-in votes? And of these, how is it possible that nearly 82% of these votes are NO votes?
Luckily, statewide the yes vote carried, but barely… 1.08M to 939K.
I’ll take a stab at it.
In 2020, there were close to 7 million votes cast in the election (with around 70% turnout), but in this referendum vote there were only around 2 million. So to start with, we have only about 20% of the voting population of Pennsylvania participating in the referendum. These people are not, of course, randomly selected; they select themselves, and I would guess they tend to be the most partisan and involved portion of the public on both sides.
Then there’s the huge discrepancy between the in-person voters and the mail-in voters, with “no” winning out by a mile in the latter and “yes” predominant (although not with anywhere near as great a margin) in the former. This difference could be the result of cheating with mail-in votes in the form of fraudulent ballot harvesting (if that technique is allowed in PA) or other approaches that might manufacture mail-in votes that don’t really exist. To decide whether this happened and/or what the possibility might have been, one would need to know – among other things – how mail-in ballots are requested in PA and what the safeguards are against fraud at that point (signature verification, for example).
But I can also imagine such skewed results occurring without any fraud. First of all, you have the aforementioned extremely motivated populations participating, and the left is often more motivated than the right. So there’s that. The other factor is that people who are voting by mail – if these are real people and real voters – are more likely at this point to be those who are afraid to leave their homes for fear of COVID. Those very same people would also tend to be those who would not want to limit the power of their governor and health authorities to do whatever they wanted in times of pandemic and other declared emergencies.
Why so many mail-in votes at all (again, assuming these are real people)? Could be fraud, or could be convenience and/or fear.