What could possibly go wrong?:
[NYC] Chancellor Richard Carranza’s new grading policy bars failing grades. Students will be marked “in progress” or “incomplete,” even if they’ve done no work at all, writes Sanzi.
Mail-in voting wasn’t a bug, it was a feature
Everyone who knows anything about elections and fraud knows that mail-in voting raises the risk of fraud. There are several kinds of mail-in voting, though, and each has different risks. Absentee voting is tolerated but the voter must make the request, and that adds an extra layer of safeguard. Riskier still is universal mail-in voting in which ballot requests are mailed to every voter on the rolls – or, riskier yet, a ballot itself mailed to everyone on the rolls. States that have had this system for years at least have had a chance to work out some of the kinks. But this year’s expansion of the practice to many states with no experience at all in it – and voter rolls that had not been well updated in the past – was an invitation to disaster.
Well, now we have the disaster. And I submit that not only did everyone know some version of this would happen, but the Democrats consider it a feature rather than a bug. The upshot is that trust in our voting system has been undermined on a scale never before seen, and that such a phenomenon could and should have been foreseen and prevented. It was foreseen, but not prevented.
I had a pre-Election Day fear that it would all come down to Pennsylvania and that the votes there would be so mixed up that it would be impossible to verify anything, and that if fraud had been committed there would be no way to prove it. I think that nightmare has come true but in an even worse form, with multiple states involved.
More:
After this Nov. 3, one thing is poignantly clear: mail-in voting is a proven disaster. As we’ve seen, it’s grossly susceptible to fraud.
Many Republicans, including President Trump, have been warning about this for months. Democrats and the mainstream media also know it’s incredibly risky. But they’ve been obfuscating or flat-out lying to us about it for months.
How do we know? They once warned about mail-in voting themselves. Consider this New York Times article from 2010, which noted, “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.”
The Times article also says “fraud is easier by mail.” This should be common knowledge, and already was among election officials. Leon County, Florida elections supervisor Ion Sancho told the Times: “The only cases of election fraud have been in absentee ballots… The more people you force to vote by mail, the more invalid ballots you will generate.”
The New York Times article concludes: “Election experts say the challenges created by mailed ballots could well affect outcomes this fall and beyond. If the contests next month are close enough to be within what election lawyers call the margin of litigation, the grounds on which they will be fought will not be hanging chads but ballots cast away from the voting booth.”
Much more at the link.
Looking at election statistics
[Hat tip: commenter “I am Sparticus.”]
I found this video fascinating. I know enough about math and graphs (although nothing about programming) to more or less understand what they’re saying, but I can’t evaluate it independently. Also, I don’t know if it would have any clout in a court of law. In addition, why on earth would any voting software need a mode in which votes could be weighted like this? Why would that ever be okay rather than fraudulent?
The main speaker, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, is characterized by Wiki as a conspiracy theorist of dubious reputation. However, his scientific credentials seem on the up and up, and some of his assertions that Wiki characterizes as “misinformation” don’t seem all that suspect to me. Just to take one example: “In March 2020 he published an open letter to president Donald Trump where he wrote that a national lockdown was unnecessary and advocated that large doses of vitamins could prevent and cure the disease.” As time has gone on, there has been quite a bit of evidence that lockdowns haven’t helped and that Vitamin D can really improve outcomes, so I don’t see how such assertions can be dismissed out of hand. The jury is still out on so many things about COVID.
Ayyadurai also ran for the Senate in the Republican primary in Massachusetts in 2018, and ended up running as an Independent and getting 3.4% of the vote. This campaign slogan of his against Elizabeth Warren makes me smile: “Only a real Indian can defeat a fake Indian.” Guy’s got a sense of humor. Lastly, he and actress Fran Drescher were an item from 2014 to 2016. Make of that what you will.
At any rate, as with any other science, the facts and the conclusions should stand or fall on their own. If anyone more conversant with the statistical and programming issues than I would like to weigh in, feel free:
Caroline Glick on the 2020 election
As President Trump said in his remarks Thursday evening, it may take time for the legal challenges to work their way through the courts and determine definitively who will be inaugurated on January 20. But we can already see that whoever wins, America’s democratic order is steeped in crisis…
The Democrats’ fomented the crisis, which places America’s very future as a constitutional democracy on the line when they refused to accept the results of the 2016 election. The media caused it by abandoning journalism in favor of political activism…
Clinton’s delegitimization of Trump and his voters morphed into a rejection of the rules of American democracy. All Democrat efforts to oust Trump from office and to block his ability to govern since, like the political violence the Democrats have employed with greater intensity in the intervening years, are a function of that move.
The Democrats revealed their new post-democratic character and totalitarian bent on inauguration day. When the millions of Democrats came out to protest the peaceful transfer of power, they called themselves “the Resistance.” They weren’t opposing Trump. They were resisting an illegitimate regime. And to take down the regime – that is, the US government – all means were justified…
It’s impossible to know how things will develop in America in the coming weeks. But it is hard to see a rainbow over the horizon. If Trump is declared the winner, the Democrats won’t accept the legitimacy of the verdict. Their use of political violence will undoubtedly rise.
And if Biden is declared the winner, the Democrats will not rest on their laurels. Having already adopted the totalitarian mindset, they will insist their newfound power be used to advance their post-democratic program. Indeed, they already are.
It’s not a rosy picture. But it seems accurate to me.
I do find it exceptionally hypocritical, even by Democrat standards, to be angry at Trump and the Republicans challenging the initial results of the 2020 election through the courts, in legal fashion, when in 2016 the Democrats were already putting in place the slow-motion never-ending deception-based coup against Trump. They are also now well into their preparations to indict him in the court system (of NY state, at the very least) for something or other – whatever they can find. I predict that, should they succeed, such an unprecedented (in this country, that is) and vindictive move will be supported by most rank and file Democrats.
Out of sorts
I just feel incredibly sad this evening. Sad because I can’t share my Dem/progressive friends’ transports of unhinged joy at the attempted DNC/MSM. coup. Sad because I love my friends but cannot look at them, since their spittle-flecked rage and hypocrisy literally turns my stomach. Sad because facts do not matter to them, and any sort of penetrating conversation will lead us down the multiple rabbit holes of their ignorance and Trump Derangement Syndrome–induced cognitive dissonance. Sad because I can feel them beginning to shun me for wanting an open and honest count of the votes. If you remember the famous Biergarten scene from the film Cabaret, I am the disaffected old guy at the table while everyone else stands up and sings “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” with the Hitler Jugend. Ironic that the sore losers of 2016, with their “Resistance” fantasy, have actually put us on the brink of 1930s Germany with their Kristallnacht violence over the summer and fall and, now, their calls for what sounds like a Final Solution to the Deplorables. We are not living now in a normal country.
I’m feeling estranged from friends, too, but that happened quite some time ago. For years I had refrained from talking to them about politics because earlier efforts went essentially nowhere, and sometimes caused enmity. What was the point?
But a couple of months prior to Election Day this year, I started talking again. Not often, but sometimes. But although there were a few pockets of decent conversation, for the most part I was impressed (and not favorably) by how little people seem to know of actual events, and how recalcitrant to change the Trump-hatred was and still is.
Now I assume they’re happy, although the three people I’ve actually spoken to post-election don’t seem happy at all. They seem relieved that Trump wasn’t re-elected, but very worried about where the country is headed. That worry doesn’t seem to have a focus (although one person is worried that Trump will refuse to leave the White House) for most except for the vague sense that the present divisiveness and anger won’t be taking us in a good direction. So there is fear, too.
Perhaps not as great as my fear, but I’m not even sure of that. I have yet to speak to a person who’s happy about the way things have turned out so far.
Et tu, Libertarians?
[Hat tip: commenter “om.”]
I was thinking about the Libertarians, and how they may have screwed things up this time, and here’s someone thinking along the same lines:
Although some who voted Libertarian might otherwise have voted Democrat, while others might have stayed home and not voted if there were no ballot alternative to Trump and Biden, the vast majority of Libertarians would have voted for Trump and Perdue if the idiots of the Libertarian Party had not been on the ballot. Look at Ron Paul and Rand Paul: they both are determined libertarians (hence Rand’s very name), but they affiliate and come down unabashedly as Republicans, not as Democrats. …
But there is no need to waste time and pause over the catastrophe the Libertarian Party has perpetrated, sabotaging the very values libertarians hold dear for smaller government and less interference with our freedoms. We have had one of the greatest presidents in our history these past four years, and we now may have lost the chance for four more years to nail down the gains because of the idiots in that party who did to Trump now what Ralph Nader’s acolytes did to Al Gore in 2000 and what Jill Stein’s Green Party helped do to Hillary Clinton four years ago. Even more pernicious than Democrat shenanigans, the Libertarian Party are the ultimate villains of this election because, if they had gotten out of the way, Trump would have beaten even the fraud.
Here are some figures from the article:
Arizona (11 Electoral Votes)
Biden — 1,633,181
Trump — 1,613,833
Libertarian — 49,454Pennsylvania (20 Electoral Votes)
Biden — 3,359,270
Trump — 3,316,019
Libertarian — 77,513Wisconsin (10 Electoral Votes)
Biden — 1,630,570
Trump — 1,610,030
Libertarian — 38,415Georgia (Presidential Race) (16 Electoral Votes)
Biden — 2,465,500
Trump — 2,455,305
Libertarian – 61,888Georgia (Perdue-Ossoff)
Ossoff — 2,365,916
Perdue — 2,456,211
Libertarian — 114,566
I’m not advocating shutting down the Libertarian Party, nor is the author. I just wish voters would understand that voting for a third-party is very often counterproductive to the policies they’d like to see instituted. This year, it’s extremely counterproductive. And yet I have no illusions that libertarians will be listening to me.
I read several months ago that one of the strategies of the Democrats this election was to keep the Green Party off the ballot in many states, for just this reason. The socialists were none too happy about it:
In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump by 11,000 votes in Michigan, 23,000 in Wisconsin, and 44,000 in Pennsylvania. In each state, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein received more votes than Clinton’s margin of defeat.
This led the Democrats, and their media apologists, to blame the Greens for a defeat which Clinton brought on herself by running a right-wing, anti-working-class campaign which allowed Trump to posture as the advocate of coal miners, steel workers, auto workers and others whose livelihood had been destroyed by the policies of big business and the Obama-Biden administration.
One conclusion drawn by the Democrats from the experience of 2016 was that the basic democratic right of third parties to ballot access and of the public to vote for a candidate of their choosing must not be allowed to disrupt the two-party system of Wall Street, the Pentagon and the CIA. Over the past two months, they have blocked the Green Party from obtaining ballot status in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the Socialist Equality Party from obtaining ballot status in Michigan—the same three states which were the margin of defeat for Clinton in the Electoral College.
While the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party—which is running its own candidates Joseph Kishore for US President and Norissa Santa Cruz for US Vice President—have fundamental class and political differences with the Green Party, we defend their right to participate in the 2020 elections. We denounce the Democratic Party for its repeated and blatant abuse of ballot access procedural rules and the courts to have Hawkins and Walker kicked off the November ballot.
The Democrats were smart to do this, and it may have ended up giving Biden just the edge he needed, whether or not fraud was committed.
On the election and the law
I haven’t watched this video yet, but I’m putting it up here because it’s been recommended, and I’ve liked these two lawyers’ discussions in the past. I believe the relevant part starts about minute 18:
Victor Davis Hanson speaks about the election and after
VDH has long been one of my favorite political commentators. I don’t agree with everything he says in this entire video, but I’ve cued it up to show a part where he makes an interesting analogy (although he starts by assuming that “for now” it looks like the anti-Trump forces may have won):
And here’s the whole thing. He’s more optimistic than I am about the radicalism of what the Democrats might be able to do in the next four years; I hope he’s right and I’m wrong:
[NOTE: Here’s Hanson post-election, writing about the NeverTrumpers.]
The Democrats’ calls for healing…
…remind me of a dynamic I’ve seen over and over in human interactions.
Person A mistreats Person B. Instead of apologizing, Person A demands that Person B forget about it and “move on.” To illustrate his/her own magnanimity, Person A says, “I’m such a big person that I’ve moved on, so why can’t you?”
Of course. It makes sense that perpetrators who believe themselves victorious would be willing and even eager to “move on” and then to pat themselves on the back for doing so.
In this case it’s even worse, because one form the mistreatment by Person A took was to refuse to heal or compromise or do anything but declare total war on Person B for four long years, setting out to utterly destroy him. So it is almost funny, if it weren’t so outrageous, that Person A is now holding out the hand of “healing” to Person B because Person A believes that victory has come at last and Person B is destroyed.
Nor is Person A offering anything that might actually lead to healing. It’s just “suck it up, buttercup, and act like everything’s just fine, because I know you’re a lot more polite, forgiving, and passive than I am.”
Some will oblige, of course.
[NOTE: In this essay, I used the singular “Person A” and “Person B” for convenience. But sometimes I mean the singular to refer to whole groups of people.]
COVID vaccine news: now it can be told
Of course, [Pfizer] announced less than a week after the election that its COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective in the latest study.
Pfizer also said it would ask to put the vaccine on the market “if pending data indicate the vaccine is safe.”
I hear a rumor that the Nobel Prize committee is planning to give Joe Biden the prize for medicine.
I’ll be very happy if a vaccine is available that’s effective and safe. New York’s Governor Cuomo, though? He wants to delay distributing it until Biden takes over, because Biden will do so much better at that. And of course, Cuomo is the go-to authority on how best to deal with COVID administratively, since his approach was such a raging success.
If I recall the election of 2000 correctly…
…newspeople weren’t calling either Bush or Gore the “president-elect” while the conflict was ongoing in the court system.
Of course, that was then, this is now. In 2000 the media had not yet gone quite so far over into utter, undisguised, blatant, no-holds-barred partisanship. The allegations were different as well. As complex as 2000 was, and as long as it took, it was simplicity itself compared to now. One state. Not fraud, but logistics of counting and whether certain types of votes qualified or not, who would do the counting and how. And two rather conventional politicians, each of them connected to previous presidents albeit in different ways (Gore had been Clinton’s VP, and Bush was Bush Sr’s son).
I don’t have to describe what’s going on now, except to point out that it involves many states, a very unconventional GOP candidate who is the incumbent, many allegations of Democrat fraud of different types, a media that has been out to destroy Trump for his entire presidency and is determined to back Biden in any way it possibly can, and a populace and two parties far more bitter and divided than before. General standards of behavior have also fallen, and although I believe that in 2000 many rank-and-file Democrats would have been repelled by voter fraud – even if committed to achieve a Democrat victory – I don’t think most of them would care if it were proven to have happened now, so great is their desire to cut down all the laws to get rid of Trump.
Tips on how to swat a fly
A change of pace from politics, and some news you can use.
I’ve intermittently had a couple of especially pesky flies this fall. Noisy little buzzing buggers, and extraordinarily fast. They eluded my fly-swatting skills, even when I tried these handy tips.
But they might work for you.
And here’s a video that tells you a lot about the world of a fly: