Nemesis for the Democrats?

The New Neo Posted on by

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Joe Biden will be our next president. But he will face Nemesis in a way that few other presidents have ever encountered the cruel Greek god…

A President Biden cannot avoid the press forever. He will soon face unscripted meetings with foreign leaders. He will have to meet dozens of movers and shakers each week. Is he or the nation prepared for the consequences of his return to normality after nearly a year of media fawning and forced isolation?…

Given the Democrats’ Faustian bargain with their leftmost faction, destructive rumors about Biden’s faculties or his family’s financial escapades will more likely come from his own party’s left wing, eager for a Harris presidency, rather than from the Republican opposition.

Biden will enter office with an ethical cloud hanging over his head — one that could have been vetted and adjudicated rather than blacked out for most of 2020. His son, brother and perhaps family associates may talk if faced with FBI and IRS probes, if not a special counsel investigation.

It will not help Biden that to defeat Trump, many of our institutions were deformed. Special counsels usually never receive a blank check — 22 months and $32 million — to assemble a team of partisans to investigate a new president on mostly hearsay evidence and an opposition-concocted dossier.

But that precedent ended with the ill-conceived Robert Muller investigation. By spring, Biden could have done to him what was done to Trump — and what Biden himself so frequently cheered on…

But Biden should hope that the opposition will not do to him and his party what the Democrats did so bitterly to Trump.

I’m not sure why this prospect would cheer me up, if it’s the left that removes Biden only to replace him with someone younger and even more leftist – an occurrence that I and almost everyone on the right have been predicting for quite some time. I happen to think it will take two years to play out, but many others expect it a lot sooner.

In the case of what happened to Trump, the press and social media were a big part of the “resistance.” The former still has extraordinary power to shape perceptions, and the latter has gained extraordinary power in recent years. Both are dedicated to protecting Biden with nearly as much fervor as they previously were and still are dedicated to destroying Trump.

The only reason they will turn on Biden at some well-coordinated point is if and when they think it’s time for him to go and to be replaced by a more effective and viable leftist leader. And when they do, there will be a coordination and unity of purpose. For now, all I see is a small amount of reporting on the fact that Hunter Biden and his uncle might be in trouble but that Joe’s hands are clean. And I believe that the agencies tasked with investigating Hunter will keep Joe out of it as long as it is decided that he needs protecting, and will throw him under the bus if and when it’s decreed that his time has come.

Plus, I think the Hunter investigation will not yield anything but a slap on the wrist (if that) for Hunter Biden. If previous experience is any guide, he will be tainted but basically protected, and his father will be allowed to distance himself by publicly maintaining a “hands-off” policy so that he can say, “See? I’m so clean that I didn’t interfere with the workings of government, even when they investigated my own beloved son.”

VDH is a classics expert, and I’m not. But I do know the basics about the hubris-nemesis thing, and I don’t have so much hubris that I think I can really see the future. I can’t. But not only do I not sense a change in the media, but I also don’t foresee the GOP being the agent t successfully do to Biden and the left what was done to Trump. One reason is lack of unity and will on the right, and the other is that the institutions (FBI, press, etc.) would marshal all their forces to thwart them.

And I will add that I don’t think a hot civil war is coming. If there’s a successful movement by the right and for the right, I believe the form it takes will either be some sort of civil disobedience or something else that I can’t presently foresee, some sort of wild card or black swan.

It’s lebkuchen time

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Regulars here may remember that most years I put up a family Christmas recipe. And here it is again.]

This recipe was brought over from Germany sometime in the mid-1800s, and was my favorite of all the wonderful treats cooked by my great-aunt, a baker of rare gifts. She and my great-uncle were not only exceptionally wonderful people, but to my childish and wondering eyes they looked very much like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.

The name of the treat is lebkuchen, but it’s quite a different one from the traditional recipe, which I don’t much care for. This is sweet and dense, can be made ahead, and keeps very well when stored in tins.

Flora’s Lebkuchen:

(preheat the oven to 375 degrees)

1 pound dark brown sugar
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 oz. chopped dates
1 cup raisins
1 tsp. orange juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. lemon juice

Sift the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon).

Beat the eggs and brown sugar together with a rotary beater till the mixture forms the ribbon. Add the orange juice, lemon juice, and extracts to it.

Add the dry mixture to it, a little at a time, stirring.

Add the raisins, dates, and walnuts.

Grease and flour two 8 X 8 cake pans [NOTE: In previous years I sometimes said 9 X 9, but 8 X 8 is actually much better and makes for a far moister product.] Put batter in pans and bake for about 25 minutes (or a little less; test the cake with a cake tester at 21 or 22 minutes to see if it’s done yet). You don’t want it to get too dark and dry on the edges, but the middle can’t still be wet when tested.

Meanwhile, make the frosting.

Melt about 6 Tbs. of unsalted butter and add 2 Tbs. hot milk, and 1 Tbs. almond extract. Add enough confectioner’s sugar to make a frosting of spreading consistency (the recipe says “2 cups,” but I’ve always noticed that’s not exactly correct). You can make even more frosting if you like a lot of frosting.

Let cake cool to at least lukewarm, and spread generously with the frosting. Then cut into small pieces and store (or eat!).

Enjoy!

Trump and the vaccine

The New Neo Posted on by

I imagine it will be a few months before I have the chance to get a COVID vaccine. I’m oldish but not mega-old, I’m not a health care professional, and I’m going to assume that places me in a group with some priority but not high priority. Despite a little apprehension at the quickness of the development of the vaccine, I’m leaning towards taking it just as soon as I can. I’d really like to approximate a normal life again – or whatever passes for normal at that point. In particular, I want to visit my family.

But there’s something to be said for waiting a bit, because once a certain percentage of the population has been immunized, COVID will become harder and harder to catch because the virus will find it more difficult to find victims in time to infect them. So if you’re wary about vaccine side effects, waiting might make some sense.

Most of you are probably thinking about all of this, too, and where you might fit in.

The other day I was talking to an old friend on the phone. This is a woman who – like most people I know – is a Democrat. I’ve known her for thirty years, but she’s never been a leftist or especially political at all. We almost never discuss politics.

This time we were talking about COVID – how tired we were of the whole thing, and how much we yearned to be able to see family members. I mentioned that I was looking forward to the availability of the vaccine, and probably would take it as soon as offered, and that I hope it will help us all to put COVID behind us. She said yes, she hopes so too, and then added that it would have happened earlier if it hadn’t been for “our president” – that latter phrase said with some anger.

I have to say that I hadn’t seen that coming. I actually asked her whether she meant Trump or Biden – that’s how momentarily confused I was by what she’d said. I knew she hated Trump, but what on earth was she talking about specifically? She made some vague reference to Trump’s foot-dragging and silence on the subject.

I said that he had actually expedited things – had she ever heard of Operation Warp Speed? As I started to explain, she made it clear that she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Just another reminder that even facts that may seem obvious and undisputed have been twisted, covered up, and/or lied about in myriad ways that reach and convince a huge number of people – and that these perceptions of Trump’s wrongdoings and evil nature have been used to construct, bit by bit, a huge and impregnable tower of falsehood that becomes an overwhelmingly obvious truth in the minds of otherwise well-meaning, loving, and intelligent people.

Light in the darkness

The New Neo Posted on by

In this season of holidays that feature light in the darkness of the darkest time of year, we also have the political shadows that have descended on America. I’m going to assume that most of us are doing what we can in the political sense right now. But it does no good to brood on politics twenty-four hours a day, although sometimes it seems I come close.

I’m trying to get away from it periodically – actually, for many hours every day. I already try to walk about three miles every day. I talk to friends and family on the phone, but except for two people who are also on the right I rarely discuss politics with my friends, especially now when they are breathing sighs of relief while I’m doing nothing of the sort.

One thing I have been doing a great deal of is listening to music on YouTube, reliving other musical eras. I can fall down musical rabbit holes that last for hours and hours and hours. Is this sort of near-obsessiveness good? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you one thing: it’s very very pleasurable. It makes me smile. It even makes me dance a bit, or at least sway and stomp and sing along (softly, so as not to alarm the neighbors).

At some point I’ll be writing more about some of these musical explorations. But for now: what are you doing to relax?

ADDENDUM:

And of course, I often watch dance videos. Rehearsal videos of the Moiseyev Dance Company keep being a suggestion from YouTube, and here’s a brief clip that I love (including the music). Their speed is phenomenal:

What’s Raffensperger’s game in Georgia?

The New Neo Posted on by

We all know how important the Georgia runoffs are. I realize that if the GOP retains the Senate it merely buys a little bit of time to stop the worst excesses of the Democrats from coming to pass now, but buying time is still important. The right needs to regroup and fight what’s going on more effectively.

When I was a Democrat and not an especially politically involved one at that, I paid little or no attention to the squabbles on the right. But over the years I’ve been been on the right, and especially for the years I’ve been blogging, those fights have been a recurrent theme and I’ve been impressed by how bitterly divided the right is, and by how much resentment conservatives have towards the GOPe.

Which brings us to Georgia’s current Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, whose behavior in this entire voting debacle seems to have been nothing short of abominable. Until it became clear that the Senate seats in Georgia were going to be subject to a runoff that would determine the future of the republic (IMHO and that of so many others), I’d never even heard of Raffensperger. But he’s a major player now.

Raffensperger has a somewhat unusual background for a politician: civil engineer. His previous political experience is all on the local level as a Johns Creek City Council representative and then a member of the Georgia House. He’s also the CEO of an engineering company and as such made a ton of money to the tune of around 26 million dollars. Raffensperger didn’t get into politics until 2012, when he was in his late 50s.

When Raffensperger ran for the SOS position in 2018 (he won in a runoff, by the way), this was his line on voting:

During his campaign, Raffensperger “said he would reduce government bureaucracy, support voter ID laws and push for verifiable paper ballots when Georgia replaces its electronic voting machines.”

This is where it gets murky, very murky. I assume that those of you who live in Georgia will have a lot more to say about this, but it seems to me that Raffensperger was totally spooked by COVID [emphasis mine]:

During the 2020 Georgia elections, Raffensperger sought to prevent Georgia polling places from printing paper backups of voter registration and absentee voting information in case polling places would struggle to use voter check-in tablets, called Poll Pads, which had been problematic in Georgia’s primary elections in June 2020. The tablets had caused long lines at polling places. Voting rights groups had requested paper backups to prevent a risk of chaos on election day in case the tablets failed. The voting rights groups sued Raffensperger in federal court; they obtained an order from a district judge ordering Georgia election officials to prepare such paper backups, but this order was blocked by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

In 2020, the Georgia presidential primaries, originally set for March 24, were moved to May 19 (the date for non-presidential primaries in Georgia), due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Later, Raffensperger further postponed the Georgia primaries to June 9 due to the coronavirus crisis.

To protect voting rights during the pandemic, Raffensperger directed the mailing of absentee (mail-in) ballot applications to all of Georgia’s 6.9 million active registered voters for the state’s June 2020 primary. After David Ralston, the Republican speaker of the state House, said that expanded use of mail-in voting would “be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia,” Republicans on a Georgia state House committee advanced legislation to block election officials from sending mail-in ballot request forms to voters ahead of elections. Raffensperger pushed back on the proposal, saying: “By a wide margin, voters on both sides of the political spectrum agree that sending absentee applications to all active voters was the safest and best thing our office could do to protect our voters at the peak of COVID-19. Some seem to be saying that our office should have ignored the wave of absentee voting that was clearly coming.” After encountering opposition, the proposed ban died in the Georgia General Assembly.

This seems to be an example of a Republican SOS pushing for extreme liberalization of voting laws due to COVID fear, and a GOP legislature trying to fight him but failing to succeed. I also wouldn’t discount the influence on Raffensperger of fear of Stacey Abrams and her leftist money and her ability to win in court by accusing the GOP opposition of racism, and I suspect that’s a partial explanation for Raffensperger’s cave.

At any rate, Georgia ended up not sending ballots to everyone after all, although mail-in voting was expanded (as it was in so many states):

Raffensperger did not send out mail-in ballot applications to every active registered voter in Georgia for the November 2020 general election, citing the cost of a mass mailing. Rather, Raffensperger created an online portal for Georgia voters to request absentee ballots. He encouraged voters to take advantage of in-person early voting and mail-in voting.

So instead of fighting all of this, Raffensperger was completely on board, and I think the reason was a combination of COVID and fear of Abrams, plus something about his own lack of experience of politics on the national level.

Now, Wiki being Wiki, it’s got its own political agenda, and the description there of the November election goes like this:

The November 2020 general election in Georgia went smoothly, avoiding the problems that had plagued the primary election in June…

Went smoothly? Well, I suppose if you’re a Democrat, you might say that.

Here’s what ensued, according to Wiki:

After the election, Raffensperger’s fellow Republicans, Georgia’s U.S. Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler issued a joint statement accusing Raffensperger of unspecified “failures” and calling for him to resign. Perdue and Loeffler offered no evidence in support of their claims, which they made after pressure from Trump, who had promoted conspiracy theories about the election and falsely claimed it was rigged…Raffensperger rejected the calls for his resignation, saying, “As a Republican, I am concerned about Republicans keeping the U.S. Senate. I recommend that Senators Loeffler and Perdue start focusing on that.”

Well Brad, they can “focus on that” all they want, but if voting fraud is committed their focus won’t matter one whit. More:

…[Raffensperger said] that fellow Republicans were pressuring him to find ways to exclude legal ballots. Raffensperger focused especially on South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, whom he said pressured him in a call to throw out postal ballots favoring Biden. Though Graham denied the allegations…Doug Collins, a Republican congressman from Georgia who lost his race and oversaw Trump’s efforts in Georgia, falsely claimed fraud in the Georgia election, prompting Raffensperger, typically known for his mild manner, to call Collins a “liar” and “charlatan” for his rhetoric.

Ignore Wiki’s editorializing and focus on what’s happening here, which is that this is another example of GOP infighting, in which it seems to me that Raffensperger’s main concern (even perhaps his sole concern) is protecting himself against accusations that he had any role in the debacle.

Here’s the very latest from Raffensperger (today), who still seems to be fighting Perdue and Loeffler more than he’s fighting the Democrats:

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger didn’t mince words Tuesday when he called out his party’s two Senate candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, for hounding his office for information their campaigns already had.

Loeffler and Perdue, both of whom are running to retain their seats in Georgia’s upcoming Senate runoffs, released a statement earlier “calling for the Georgia Secretary of State to compile and release a final list of newly registered voters following his failure to do so ahead of the start of early voting.”…

“Though I’ve told the Republican Party to stop focusing on me and instead direct their energies to winning the Senate runoffs, clearly they haven’t listened,” Raffensperger said. “As embarrassing as it is for Sens. Perdue and Loeffler not to know that the data they want is already publicly available from the Secretary of State, it’s even worse that they’re not aware their own campaigns already have the data they’re looking for. Early voting has already started but it’s not too late for them to call their offices and get their campaigns in order.”

Once again we have the same pattern: Raffensperger in a huff to defend himself and publicly rebuking the two candidates who need all the help they can muster. I have no idea whether they really do have the specific information they requested, but this all could have been handled in private in order to minimize the damage. It doesn’t seem to me that Raffensperger is trying to minimize the damage at all. Again, I’d welcome more information from those closer to the situation than I am.

What a horrible mess, though – and it’s a mess with potentially disastrous national consequences.

The view from now

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

…Wisconsin was the clearest case of one judicial problem Trump faced. The remedy was too much for any court to grant. As I cautioned many times, no court was going to disallow thousands (and in some cases millions, such as PA) of votes which technically may have been unlawful, but were cast by people who thought they were voting lawfully and who were following the procedures of election authorities…

Technical arguments, while possibly legally correct, were not going to, and did not, persuade a majority of any appellate court to grant the relief sought.

Separate from the technical challenges, the presentation of actual fraud claims has been haphazard and disjointed. Unlike the Democrats, who were highly organized legally, Republicans had different lawyers filing different claims without any apparent coordination, sometimes in the same state. Legislative hearings are not court.

A big part of the problem was the truncated electoral college timetable. As I mentioned with regard to Nevada, trial court judges expected Trump or his proxies to come into court with conclusive evidence of fraud at the get-go, while eschewing the normal documentary and testimonial discovery process that would take months or years. I think it’s fair to say Trump never got his evidentiary day in court because of this truncated process, but it’s also fair to say that the law requires that election disputes — particularly presidential disputes — be resolved quickly and that only definitive proof of fraud affecting the result gets you past go…

I don’t blame people for fighting these legal fights. I said all along, and stand by it, that we should let the legal cases play themselves out. There is a strong sense that something went very wrong here; tens of millions of people have that sense. I certainly do.

The court proceedings and legislative hearings have exposed a lot of problems with the election. Shining a light on the threat of mail-in voting and election practices was a public service, and should serve as a warning for 2022 and 2024.

Much more at the link. Professor Jacobson says the left was far more organized than the right in its approach to this, and that’s true, but it’s also because the left is composed of ruthless zealots who are all about taking power, and the right is not. What’s more, the left was playing offense and the right defense.

For those of you who think I’m too easy on the right – I don’t think I am. I’m as frustrated and angry at anyone, and I wish the right was much better at fighting these things. But I put the blame where I believe it belongs: the left. And I also wrote this post on November 30 (entitled “How hard did the GOP try to stop the voting rule changes?”) in an attempt to discover whether the right did fight what happening in terms of the rule changes that facilitated fraud – or at least try to fight them – prior to the election. The answer to my question was “yes, they most certainly did, although apparently not enough.” Please read the post itself to get a better picture.

Unlike most people who go to bed early, I was up for much of the night on November 3-4, and so I knew even before I went to bed that there was big trouble. Big big trouble. It did not surprise me, because in the months building up to Election Day, as I read about the rules changes in state after state, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that even if the polls were wrong and Trump might be winning in the vote tally, that fraud would rob him of victory.

I wrote a few posts about some of this – for example, see this one on the GOP’s fight in Pennsylvania against the relaxation of signature matching laws, a fight they lost in the courts. The title was, “I have a feeling that Pennsylvania will feature highly in the coming election,” and it concluded this way:

And SCOTUS has already ruled that Pennsylvania can allow ballots to to arrive up to three days after Election Day and with no postmark. That already seemed like a perfect setup for fraud. And now this. And in one of the most important swing states of all.

That is no accident, I believe.

There were other fights and losses in other states and they caused a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that came every time I thought about the election for several months prior to it. And the events of the night of the vote-counting revealed that this had indeed been part of the plan. It seemed to me – and this was almost the worst thing about it – that once fraud of that type had occurred, there was no remedy. In fact, one of the most important of all the facts that have been revealed by this election is the fact that there is probably no ex-post-facto remedy that courts are willing to apply for election fraud, period.

On November 6 I wrote this about voting fraud:

…[O]nce the deed is done it’s very difficult to call it back. The Court would be loathe to overturn what is perceived as the result of the 2020 election, a Biden win, and declare Trump winner when Biden has been labeled the winner by the entire media and at least half of the American public. That’s my prediction, anyway.

In addition, it’s hardly just Pennsylvania. One of the things the Democrats have going for them is their control of deep-blue large cities in swing states, and that’s the key to perpetuating fraud. If they’re willing to do it in most or all of the swing states, then it is exceptionally hard to counter because it will produce an overwhelming effect – and because once the votes are counted, how does one prove anything to the degree that the Court would require?

Correct me if I’m wrong – I’m no expert on election law, and I haven’t been able to locate a definitive source that can answer my questions – but once Republican poll watchers are sent away and the vote-counting is done in secret, and once a bunch of bogus votes are counted and/or bona fide ones tossed, how can it be proven? The envelopes with the postmarks and names are gone, aren’t they? And even if saved, they’re no longer matched with the votes they contained, right? And in particular in states where mass unsolicited mailings had occurred, I doubt for the most part that votes cast exceeded ballots mailed, so the total vote counts would be unlikely to prove fraud on a scale that exceeds Biden’s margin of victory in that state, right? Even whistleblowers – and what Democrat partisan is a whistleblower – are unlikely to be able to report fraud on the scale that would justify overturning an election. If the votes are counted in secret, it seems to me that it’s game over even if some sort of suspicious activity is proven in court, because it’s a case of “What’s the remedy?”.

I could go on in that vein, but you get the idea. As I said before, I don’t like being a downer…

And then on December 1 I wrote this:

Barr and all the rest do not want to overturn an election without something on the order of, not just a smoking gun, but a radioactive smoking nuclear blast. That kind of evidence can never exist in a situation like this where the alleged perps were careful to cover up or dispose of the evidence, and the proof positive must somehow be discovered and proven in record time.

If there really was no evidence, it wouldn’t be such a problem. Only a fringe group would believe the election had been stolen by fraud. But that’s not the case. The evidence is actually quite strong, just not strong enough to meet what amounts to an impossible standard of proof when combined with the speed that’s necessary because of election deadlines. If the election was indeed stolen, the thieves were counting on exactly this state of affairs.

They will count on it in the future, too.

I’ve been thinking about where the right should go from here – not that the right is waiting for my direction. But the hour is very late and getting later. One thing that must be done is that any legislature controlled by the GOP should immediately pass laws that tighten voting rules in order to make fraud much harder. But – as a very eloquent witness in the Michigan hearings said – the problem is often not the laws, but their enforcement. How can a legislature controlled by the GOP make sure the laws it passes are followed in cities in their own state that are utterly controlled by the Democrats? How can a legislature controlled by the GOP get such laws past what might be a Democrat-controlled state supreme court (as in PA) determined to shoot down their efforts?

And as I wrote yesterday, even if the states with GOP legislatures manage to pass these laws, if the Democrats get control of the Senate it’s game over. I predict that one of the first things the Democrats will do if they win the Senate is to pass a voting “reform” bill that will override any GOP efforts on the state level, and loosen all the voting rules on a national level in a way that will favor Democrats and/or voting fraud indefinitely.

I apologize for the gloominess of this post. I’d love to be talked out of it. But what I think we are seeing here is that no constitution and no law can protect us if vast segments of the population are eager and willing to say that the ends justify the means and to employ any ends to seize power.

Barr resigns

The New Neo Posted on by

There are no dull news days anymore.

Although of course it’s probably about 99% certain that Barr’s career as AG would be coming to an end anyway in a few weeks, he decided to get out of the heat of the kitchen a bit sooner:

Trump announced the departure in a Monday evening tweet.

“Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family,” Trump tweeted.

The president added: “Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General. Thank you to all!”

Trump tweeted a copy of Barr’s resignation letter saying he will depart his job on Dec. 23. “I will spend the next week wrapping up a few remaining matters important to the Administration,” Barr wrote, in a letter that largely praised Trump.

“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” Barr wrote to Trump.

It all sounds so normal and polite, doesn’t it? But you can bet your bottom dollar that the MSM will spin it quite differently, to the detriment of Trump (and of Barr, if possible).

Who knows what’s really going on? After all, Trump has been criticizing Barr lately and the two are not what you’d call natural bedfellows to begin with. Barr might be trying to preserve his DC bona fides for the future. If so, it won’t work.

Or maybe he’s just exhausted and wants to have a nice long holiday.

More here

Well, this is an interesting move on the part of GOP legislators in some of the contested states

The New Neo Posted on by

Interesting:

While the Democratic electors in the states of Pennsylvania and Georgia are casting their votes for Joe Biden, slates of Republican electors in those states cast votes for President Trump just in case legal challenges succeed.

There’s also word that Michigan may be doing it as well. Michigan GOP Electors were prevented from getting into the state house to vote. But they can vote anywhere.

So what that means is that they are trying to ensure that ultimately they have enough votes on record.

It also offers Congress and the state legislatures an alternate slate of electors in the contested states.

Of course, this is dependent on legal challenges succeeding, so I can’t say I’m optimistic.

One thing 2020 has driven home is the fact that in the realm of election fraud by Democrats, prevention is everything because no legal remedy will be applied. And by “applied” I mean that cases will not even be heard so that the evidence can be fully aired. This does not serve the public and is especially pernicious in a case like that of 2020 in which nearly half the public thinks that the election was fraudulent.

When I see people criticizing those who think that widespread fraud occurred, saying there’s no evidence or insufficient evidence, I wonder just what they would consider sufficient evidence and how they imagine that evidence could actually be obtained in time to mount a legal challenge. Short of confessions, or easily obtainable recordings of plotting sessions, or software that gives big banner warnings that say “now the fraud begins,” I can’t think of evidence that would convince them.

And maybe even those things I listed wouldn’t convince them.

[NOTE: I continue to be very worried about the “voting reform” legislation scenario I sketched in this post two days ago.]

“Trump is a Fascist dictator”

The New Neo Posted on by

Blogger OregonMuse at Ace’s writes:

I’ve never understood the ‘Trump is a fascist dictator’ schtick. What has he ever done? Name one thing that he has done that is dictatorial. Issued a few EOs? That’s pretty much par for the course for every president these days. Put kids in cages? That was a program started by Obama. I can tell you some things he hasn’t done. Like this summer, when blue cities were burning, he could’ve signed some sort of emergency decree, then used that authority to send in military units to quiet things down. But he waited for the state governors to act, as it is their primary responsibility. He waited until he was asked to send National Guard units.

That’s not dictatorial. That’s pure federalism. In fact, I would say that Donald Trump is probably the one president most respectful for federalism and aware of the boundaries between federal, state, and local government in modern times.

I think I can shed some light on this by saying that looking for rationality here is futile, because that’s not what it’s about. What it is about is several things at once.

There’s a segment of people driving the “Trump the fascist” narrative, some of them in the press or the upper echelons of the Democratic Party and even some prominent Republicans or former Republicans, who know it’s garbage but who hate what he’s doing and how he threatens their own interests (such as, for example, being in the pay of China, or having power). They therefore cynically say any number of things like this in an attempt to influence public perceptions.

Then there’s another group who have a visceral negative reaction to Trump’s tweets or his brash manner or his hair or his gut or a combination of some or all of them and who think something like this: “brashness or boldness on the political side opposed to me equals fascism” and/or “brashness or boldness on the part of someone I don’t like equals fascism.” Sometimes such people know what fascism actually is, but I think that’s rather rare. More commonly, I think, this group means “fascist” in the general sense of “someone I don’t like who does something powerful that I don’t agree with.”

So that group – which I think is a pretty large group – hears the “fascism” and “fascist” accusation against Trump (or against just about anything the GOP might muster up the courage to do) and the designation sounds right to them. Not only does it sound right, it sounds like an obvious truth that doesn’t need argument or proof and with which only the most uninformed, idiotic, or evil people would disagree.

If you’re using Amazon for holiday shopping, please don’t forget to buy through this blog

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, it’s that time again. It’s getting really close to the holidays. Actually, it’s already Chanukah, and Christmas is near.

But there’s still time – if you care to solve your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus Amazon – to use the Amazon widget on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year). Or, if you’re on a cellphone, scroll down till you see it towards the bottom of the text under my photo and the “donate” button.

I thank you all in advance, and I thank all of you who’ve already done your shopping through my blog. I’ll be bumping this up and/or re-posting it every now and then until Christmas.

If you’re not an Amazon fancier, you could donate through Paypal and that “donate” button, of course. Hey, you could even do that if you are an Amazon user. I appreciate every single penny.

In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).

Once more, with feeling: Red Rubber Ball

The New Neo Posted on by

On Saturday I wrote a post comparing the attitudes of the singer in several breakup songs. One of those songs was “Red Rubber Ball,” which I’ve just recently discovered, to my great surprise, was written by Paul Simon (and Bruce Woodley of “The Seekers,” although from what I’ve been able to glean, Woodley’s contribution was small) back in 1966. The song seemed too – well, too bouncy for Simon, but then I remembered that he definitely has his upbeat moods. Sometimes Simon’s even Feelin’ Groovy.

Here’s the original again:

And here’s the entire reason that this post was written. It’s a rare version by Simon and Garfunkel, recorded in concert in 1967. They give it a bit more bite, I think, at least on Simon’s part: