Tag Archives: election

My President!

I’m sure some of you have wondered why I have not posted daily on the “results” of the election. Well, I’m having a tough time right now. Emotions are mixed and running high. I’ve even thought about why I want to live in a country that in the 21st century is unable to conduct a legal, valid, verified election while some third world crap holes can do it.

My bride sent me the below article this morning as I was busy answering a plethora of emails, and still have many more pending. In case you are unaware, today is the Marine Corps’ 245th birthday, so it is a very busy days with emails, texts, and phone calls from all over the world — literally! To all my Marine brothers and sisters on here, Happy Birthday!

Anyway, I scanned the article, then read it twice. The author raises some valid points, but nothing he says dampens in any way my respect and admiration for our current president. He was what we needed at the time, and has accomplished much during his term, and if he could have one more term, I feel certain he would turn this country around and into something I would be proud of and glad I served. But right now, I am depressed beyond words.

You read, decide for yourself, and comment if you will.

Semper Fi;

Jim

 

President Trump is projected to lose a close election.

This being modern America, nothing is final until the courts have spoken (particularly the Supreme Court, which has been too timid to say much). That process must be allowed to play out. To my knowledge, there is no hard evidence at this point of anything so monumental that it could change the result, but disturbing anecdotal reports merit investigation. And Biden’s margin of victory is so razor-thin in some states that recounts may be warranted if the president chooses to press the matter.

Undoubtedly, post-election litigation would be pursued if the shoe were on the other foot. Democrats, after all, went straight to the litigation mat when they lost a close one in 2000, even though Al Gore had been on the cusp of conceding. And “the Resistance” spent three years not accepting the outcome of the 2016 election, on the basis of a bogus “Russia collusion” narrative ginned up by the Clinton campaign. In this era, we take matters far less consequential than the election of our president to court. I’m not suggesting that this is a good thing, I’m simply stating a fact.

Let’s take a deep breath and let matters play out. There is no crisis of the regime. Joe Biden is presumptively President-elect Biden. He will be my president and the president of all Americans — even as many of us vigorously oppose much of what he wants to do, as we surely will. He should get the chance to be a good president that Democrats never gave Donald Trump. For Biden’s sake, and especially for the country’s, the departments and agencies of government should prepare for a smooth transition of power.

Meanwhile, the states do not need to certify their results until December 8 (really, they have until December 14, the day states must report to Congress). Biden has so far struck the right tone in urging patience and calm through the tense days of ballot-counting. It will boost his standing as a legitimate president to encourage an orderly process of court challenges while, of course, pressing his rights in that process.

For those who supported the president’s reelection (including me), the result is hard to swallow. It was not, however, hard to see coming.

In 2016, Trump barely won a close election against a historically weak and deeply unpopular Democratic candidate for whom there was little enthusiasm. In 2020, Trump faced a very weak but not nearly as unpopular Democratic candidate – and while there was little enthusiasm for Biden, the desire to defeat Trump was rabid in the Democratic base. Given the statistical miracle of Trump’s 2016 triumph, he was going to have to do more than marginally better this time in order to win. He outperformed expectations, but he did not outperform 2016.

The power of the presidency can mask a lot of deficiencies. Yet the hole in which the improbable Trump presidency began is worth revisiting. In her endless “I wuz robbed” dirge, Hillary Clinton never tired of saying she’d won the popular vote. That was not just irrelevant in constitutional terms, since the state races (translated by the Electoral College) decide the outcome; it was also Clintonian spin to deflect attention from the fact that she did not win a popular majority. But what does that say about Trump?

The popular vote is a useful snapshot of the then-new president’s standing on January 20, 2017. He got 3 million fewer votes than someone who herself could not crack 50 percent. He’d somehow won what was essentially a two-way race with just 46 percent of the vote. Out of nearly 140 million votes cast, 54 percent of Americans voted against him. If a statistically negligible number of voters in a handful of states had gone the other way, there would have been no talk of a populist revolt. The story would have been that Clinton, a Washington-establishment eminence, cruised to the victory the Smart Set and all the polls had predicted. The New Yorker would gleefully have published its ready-to-run cover.

The right way to look at Trump’s unlikeliest of triumphs was as a gift . . . and an opportunity. It was a chance to appeal to Republican skeptics and the vast middle, to do the hard work of changing a 46–54 deficit into 54–46 support, and beyond. Trump had the policies to do that, along with a unique way of appealing to voting blocs who’d tuned out traditional Republicans.

Yet the president could never get over himself.

That was clear from the start. Instead of coming to grips with the low level of support with which he started his term, the president bantered from the beginning about his “Electoral College landslide.” It was an ironic illusion of broad support: Trump had been known to call the Electoral College a “disaster for democracy,” and his EC margin of victory actually ranks in the bottom fifth in U.S. election history. But he talked up the “landslide” nonetheless — while his administration “hit the ground running” by absurdly displaying skewed aerial-photograph evidence bizarrely intended to prove that his inaugural crowd was bigger than Barack Obama’s.

An unpopular president’s surest first step to becoming a reelected president is the realization that he has a lot of work to do with the public, especially with convince-ables willing to give him a chance – which is a lot of people, because most Americans are not hardcore partisans; they like to like their president. Such self-awareness spurred Richard Nixon to reelection in one of American history’s biggest actual landslide victories — in the Electoral College and by every other measure.

Donald Trump never could go there. He was under siege more than he deserved to be, but he brought a great deal of it on himself by gratuitously punching down at non-entities he should have ignored. Just as important, when troubles came, and they came in waves, he would recede into the comfort of his adoring base. They made excuses for his every foible, spun his errors as the shrewd maneuvering of a master businessman, and never demanded that he clean up his act. To the contrary, they found the act irresistible, just as he found his place at the center of the world’s attention irresistible — whether commanding attention for good or bad reasons.

President Trump did many good things. The constitutionalist overhaul of the federal judiciary will be his great legacy, especially if a President Biden revives Obama-era “pen and phone” governance. Trump has shown that the U.S. economy still roars when government removes suffocating regulation, and that its growth can be a boon to Americans at the ladder’s lower rungs. He has given Republicans a workable template for appealing to black and Hispanic Americans. He has reshaped policy toward China in a way more realistic for dealing with a hostile competitor. He has marginalized the Iranian menace and reoriented Middle Eastern policy, achieving peace pacts that were once inconceivable. He has been unabashedly pro-life (and was I ever wrong in thinking this was just a 2016 campaign pose). He has shown Republicans that the culture war is worth fighting without apology, rather than surrendering bit by bit.

Still, how maddening that he never recognized the majesty of the presidency, befitting its awesome duties, as something to rise to, as something worth striving to be worthy of. He never seemed to grasp that the great power of the presidency is that when the president speaks, it means something — and that forfeiting this power is ruinous. He never seemed to understand that, in a country where we like to like our president, when your policies are more popular than you are, you’ve got a problem.

Here, most Americans believe — for very good reasons — that they are better off than they were four years ago under the last president, yet they’ve voted to replace the incumbent with the last guy’s veep. That can only mean Donald Trump’s nemesis wasn’t Joe Biden. It was Donald Trump.

Originally posted 2020-11-10 13:19:05.

Fair and Balanced?

Received this from an Marine brother, Ed “Mac” McCloskey , an 8th & I Alum a few years before me. He got it from a retired US Army LTC. I am in total agreement with Mac and his LTC friend on their  assessments  of the current state of FOX News.  Personally, I gave up FOX earlier this year when it was apparent the Murdoch kids were going to the left. No more “Fair and Balanced  – You Decide,” that’s all gone except for Tucker Carlson, who I still watch. And who knows, they may drop him soon?

What a shame, the last of the holdouts finally gives it. Change the channel, or best just shut the damn TV off, there are none left worth watching. 

I’m going to use his letter as a basis and send one myself, how about you? Or better yet, see who sponsors FOX News, that may be the best approach — money talks.

LOS ANGELES, CA – OCTOBER 21: Political commentator Tucker Carlson speaks during Politicon 2018 at Los Angeles Convention Center on October 21, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Fox and Friends and Fox News:

Please pass this to your corporate bosses.

Like many of your viewers, I think, it is my perception, especially this year, that your news organization has been drifting to the left on the political spectrum.

When Fox News started reporting the news and with evening commentary shows, your motto was Fair and Balanced … We Report, You Decide.”

You have moved from that mission statement.  In particular, your polling, your reporting during the 2020 election campaign has been anything but “Fair And Balanced.”

I did not become a regular viewer and then become a conservative; I became a regular viewer because I am a conservative.  Likewise, I have written to the Republican party over the years that I support the party because, as a conservative, I have nowhere else to go and to have my views respected on the nature of our political system, the role of government at all levels, the importance, in particular, of the Bill of Rights, to the preservation of individual liberties in the face of an ever-expanding Federal Government.

This year, especially, you have participated in and reported on polls that were clearly out of line with the general mood of the Republic.  Your polling, like in 2016, was wildly inaccurate.  Rush Limbaugh informed us on his Friday radio show that he had had a communication from Brett Bair that Mr Bair had been told that Rush said that President Trump had lost the election.  Rush addressed this immediately at the beginning of the next segment of the show.  He said that he had told Brett that that was untrue and warned Brett against joining the other main stream media outlets in calling the race for Biden.  Rush stated on the show that the reason that CNN and MSNBC were begging Fox to call the race was to complete the humiliation of the President and of Fox News for supporting Conservatives all these years.

About 24 hours later, Fox News did exactly what Rush warned you not to do.

A Roger Ailes-led version of Fox News, with so many eye witness allegations of potential voter fraud, would never have done what you did on Saturday, November 7th.  That Fox News would have been pursuing those stories to determine the truth of the situation.  The Sons-of-Rupert-Murdoch-version of Fox News happily jumped on the “steal the vote” bandwagon and called the race for Biden.

Specifically,

  1. You called the state races for Biden using apparently entirely different standards that for Trump.
  2. When it became readily apparent and easily proven that there were many ballot issues in the battleground states, you called AZ for Biden and left that call in place even in the face of knowledge that there were many ballots to be counted from areas of the state where the President is wildly popular.
  3. You left in place your decision to call MI and PA for Biden when it is clear that there were “shenanigans” underway, including, but not limited to, legally certified Republican poll watchers being denied access to precinct counting areas, the counties in battleground states using a particular counting software were reporting “glitches” involving thousands of ballots in each county, that had been marked for Trump and down-ballot Republicans, were switched to Biden and down-ballot Democrats.
  4. In Democrat controlled county after county, counting of ballots received in early voting and on election day, counting was mysteriously stopped for hours at a time, at the same time that Republican poll watchers were being denied their legally certified opportunity to observe the counting.  Magically, in those jurisdictions, previously unknown ballots were found that, unlike the rest of the state, broke along the same percentages as the previous Trump vs Biden votes, were entirely marked only for Biden.

I could cite many other instances.  However, my deepest disappointment is the general arrogance of the main stream media, which you have joined, to believe that it is your duty to determine who wins and loses these elections.

I am, therefore, declaring my independence from you for the foreseeable future.  I will get my news and commentary from other, less biased sources.  I may be the only viewer you lose because of your conduct this year but I doubt it.  I have already seen on line that there is a growing backlash against Fox for how you have done your job in the run up to this election.  If and when someone advised me that you have returned to your previous standard of “Fair and Balanced … We Report, You Decide,” I may return.

Sincerely,
Ron Kohl
LTC, US Army (Ret)
Former Fox News Viewer

Originally posted 2020-11-09 14:47:23.

Need Some Help Folks

Okay, as I’m sure you are as well, I am sick over all this election trouble, but knew it was coming. The Dems have had four years to ensure what happened to Clinton would not happen to him. So while we wait for all the legal battles I need some help.

I am a die hard right wing conservative through and through. So, what are we supposed to do now?

I reckon we are supposed to take a clue from that other side and should be rioting,  breaking windows, burning down buildings,  looting the stores in our area, and maybe even shooting at policemen and burning their cars?

Personally, I favor Bass Pro Shops or Home Depots. My wife says she favors Bed, Bath, & Beyond. What about food and beverages? We’ll bring a cheese and cracker tray. I’m wondering about the dress code, are dungarees okay or something a little less formal; maybe western? Actually, since we are in Florida, I favor shorts and an UA T.

We need an organizer and of course, some one to fund the operations and transportation; I seriously doubt if George Soros would finance this one; he’s probably short on funds by now.

We need some lists. I have so many questions since I’ve never done anything like this before. Maybe some of the Dems on here can help us. Oh, I forgot, I don’t think we have any of them on here except this Daniel fellow, but he is so stupid he wouldn’t know how to find his butt with both hands, about as ignorant as a box of hammers.

Perhaps some of you could contact folks in MI, PA, WI, CA, OR, WA, or NV and ask for their suggestions. But then they may be too busy carting in more mail-in ballots.

Anyway, lets try and get some answers from someone. Biden , the puppet, wouldn’t know since he hasn’t figured out where he is, or if they have even let him out of his basement yet.

I have decided I need we new name for what is supposed to be the Democratic Party or DNC as some call it. I wonder what Carter thinks about his party, of JFK, or even LBJ? Me think LNC as in Liberal National Committee, or maybe the Scum Sucking Party, or the American Communist Party? Any suggestion?

I refuse to take my Trump signs down from my yard or stop wearing my red MAGA hat. So in a year or so when everything turns to dodo, I can smile and proudly say, not my fault!

Originally posted 2020-11-07 13:35:51.

Ballot Bonanza

Another great one from Greg, thank you sir. Folks, fasten your seat belts as this coming election is shaping up to be the biggest scandal America has ever experienced. At least in my lifetime. This one will make the Florida “hanging chads” incident look like child’s play. I voted yesterday and I was very impressed with the way my early voting precinct in Lee County, FL handled everything. from social distancing, not allowing entrance without a mask — who in their right mind would even think of coming to vote without a mask, maybe they needed a new one knowing they would have masks to provide — to the layout, organization, and politeness of the workers. Well done Lee County!!

Yes, I stood in line in the hot sun for about twenty-five minutes, but hey, this my duty, a duty I served to protect. So, get off your ass and go vote in person, wear a mask, social distance, wash you hands when your done, and wear your little “I Voted” sticker on your shirt with pride.

I believe in my heat of hearts that Trump will win this election, I mean he has God on his side. Surely if the other side wins, He may find himself restricted in America like never before.

I’m remined of the story, if I may digress, about the homeless man who showed up in a church wearing rags. The pastor told him he was not welcome in this church dressed like that. He was instructed to go home and pray to God and ask what the proper attire should be to come into this church. The  following Sunday the homeless man showed up, of course in the only clothes he had – rags. The Pastor stopped him and asked if he had done what he was instructed to do last Sunday, The man replied that he had. The Pastor asked, “Well what did God say”? The man politely replied that God said he  didn’t know, He’d never been in this church.

May be a funny story, but with true meaning. This election is about much more than politics, personalities, and policies. It’s about the future of our country as a Nation.

By: G. Maresca

There are some Americans who have received numerous ballots in the mail over the past month that you’d think they were already deceased.  Who among us has not read or heard about mail-in voting shenanigans occurring throughout our fruited plain?

For Democrats there are no wrong addresses, only misplaced and uncounted ballots.  Covering elections years ago, the standard refrain throughout the Pennsylvania Coal Region was the Democrats always had a 500-vote advantage before the polls ever opened their doors

Recently, military members from Pennsylvania had their ballots recovered along the side of a road, while trays of ballots were found trashed along a highway in Wisconsin.  The Newark, N.J. Star-Ledger reported a mail carrier was arrested by the FBI after being caught on camera tossing ninety-nine ballots in the garbage.

Supposedly all those ballots cast were for Republican Richard Nixon. Okay, they weren’t for Nixon, but the point is this election could be another 2000 Florida-election fiasco on steroids.

Project Veritas, a non-profit organization of investigative journalists, reported stolen ballots from senior citizens and public housing in Minnesota were confiscated among supporters of Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar. They also released a video documenting a Hispanic woman in Texas, who claimed she was “bringing at least at least 7,000 votes to the polls.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton reports eight states including Pennsylvania have registered voters totaling in excess of 100% of those eligible, which violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.  Accordingly, the counties of Chester, Delaware and Bucks have failed to make reasonable efforts to remove ineligible voters from their rolls.

A federal judge in Wisconsin has allowed for an extra week to count mail-in/absentee ballots.  Another judge did the same for Michigan, but consenting for two weeks — both states in 2016 were won by razor-thin margins by Donald Trump.

According to David Becker, director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, Nongovernmental groups have inundated Pennsylvania voters with mail ballot applications that has contributed to a deluge of duplicates sent to dead folks, prior home owners and stray cats.

Pennsylvania Republicans have filed an emergency request with the U.S. Supreme Court hoping to undo a State Supreme Court ruling mandating that state election officials accept all mailed ballots up to three days after the election. With 20 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win the presidency, Pennsylvania, like Michigan and Wisconsin are among the most hotly contested states with Trump winning Pennsylvania last time by 44,292 votes out of more than 6 million cast.

These ballot tales are as numerous as the votes they supposedly represent.

Properly applied for and submitted, absentee ballots are legitimate, but are often not counted unless in sufficient numbers.  Normally, one percent of mail-in ballots are disqualified.  According to the Wall Street Journal, in April’s Wisconsin Democratic primary, 2.5% of ballots were disallowed – the equivalent of three times Trump’s victory margin in 2016, where 134,000 Wisconsinites voted by mail.  This year, 1.8 million ballots are expected.

By voting in person, your vote is much more likely to count.

The risk of not getting counted is higher for absentee and mail-in ballots that are subject to challenge and disqualification that include questionable signatures and witnesses.  Who marked that mail-in ballot and were you unduly influenced or mentally competent when you did? What about your elderly mother’s ballot at the nursing home?  Did she really make the choice, or was she helped?  When mailing did they offer to help others as well, or perhaps accidentally forgot to deposit them?

If Democrats lose the election, they will blame someone besides themselves.

Will it be a mere coincidence, or a calculated “discovery” of missing ballots in heavily Democrat areas, where the race is just too close to call?  Expect an army of Democrat lawyers to file lawsuits as these “missing ballots” are ripe for harvesting.

Examples of such subterfuge have existed before, and it defies logic to think that unscrupulous players will not be at it again.

Many voters have been influenced to believe that you should skip voting at the polls for fear of contracting COVID-19.

When the sanctity of casting one’s ballot becomes increasingly questionable, voter fraud escalates resulting in a direct threat to any election’s integrity and taints the democratic process.

The most important civic duty one can do is vote – and vote in person if at all possible.

 

Originally posted 2020-10-31 14:35:50.

Sports

Disgusting, absolutely disgusting!!!  Americans Favorite sport? Really? I’d rather sit by my pool and watch the grass grow.

LOS ANGELES, CA – JULY 23: Los Angeles Dodgers kneel during the National Anthem prior to a MLB baseball game on Opening Day at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday, July 23, 2020. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images).
                          How about this one for a reality check?

As a sports fan, it pains me to say this: I watched not one inning of the 2020 World Series. This revelation is not some preening, pin-a-medal-on-me political puffery — “Those sports ball players are annoying, America-hating commies, so I’m not watching” — but rather the embarrassed confession of a discouraged, disillusioned former fanatic who has come to realize that my erstwhile sports obsessions are really not all that important.

Apparently, I’m far from alone. The Tampa Bay Rays’ instant classic walk-off Game 4 win drew 8.95 million viewers, the second-lowest viewership in World Series history — ahead of only Game 3’s 8.2 million. For contrast, remember that only four short years ago, Game 7 between the Cubs and Indians peaked at 49.9 million viewers. Game 7 of the classic 1986 Mets-Red Sox series had an estimated viewership as high as 60 million.

The ratings numbers have attached themselves to an anvil and tossed the anvil off a cliff into a black hole. It’s a shocking decline. MLB is not alone in seeing its appeal become more selective, Spinal Tap-style. The NFL’s once-vaunted viewership juggernaut is shedding passengers at an alarming pace; the league is left celebrating a 33 percent decline year-over-year for the most recent Sunday Night game, because it represented a slight uptick compared to the rest of this season’s dismal numbers.

And the NBA?  Woof.  Game 3 of the 2020 NBA Finals averaged 5.9 million viewers. For comparison, Michael Jordan’s last game as a Bull, the clinching Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, averaged almost 36 million viewers. Overall, the Lakers-Heat series dropped 51 percent from the 2019 numbers and 67 percent from 2018.

To extend the Spinal Tap metaphor, the NBA is a few BLM woke bombs away from second billing behind Puppet Show. Let’s be fair: There are mitigating circumstances. Nothing about this year is normal. MLB shoehorned a 60-game season into a pandemic-ravaged sports calendar. The NBA played its Finals at a time of year when teams are normally in training camp. The NFL has clung to something resembling a normal schedule, but the mostly empty stadiums and piped-in crowd noise have lent a surreal, off-putting atmosphere to the proceedings.

Personally, I’ve found it hard to care about sports when the very future of the Republic seems to be at stake, and every day’s headlines bring some fresh hell to torment and terrorize my fragile psyche. Sport becomes far less relevant in times like these, even as simple escapism. There’s no escaping a pervading sense of doom. But after the election, will my apathy magically dissipate, much like I expect the pandemic panic to do? Will I re-engage my former passion for pro sports? It’s entirely possible. A return to normalcy in 2021 would likely include a reboot of a casual interest in the exploits of overgrown man-children and a willingness to set aside their silly political posturing. A post-election de-weaponization of the virus will allow us all to relax, breathe and reclaim life’s simple pleasures. I hope so, anyway.

One final piece of advice: Don’t wait for woke-ism to recede from pro sports before re-engaging. Believe it or not, it is possible to set all that aside and simply enjoy the games themselves. If I let politics control my entertainment choices, I’d be left with listening to the Beatles song “Taxman” on an endless loop, and not much else. Life’s too short, and Jon Voight’s not making many movies these days.

Originally posted 2020-10-30 10:52:09.