Trump’s losing Georgia and he’s going to lose Pennsylvania. His law suits are being tossed.
He’s done.
Update: A good piece on why Trump actually has a case in PA. Doesn’t look like it will matter, Biden will have enough electoral college votes without, but worth reading. (h/t commenter S. Brennan.)
metamars
I’m not a lawyer, so bear with me. Can a “tossed suit” be appealed to a higher court, or not?
metamars
I had recently gone looking for Steve Pieczenik content concerning the election, supposedly a white hat deep stater. (He’s not officially working for the CIA or other government agency, these days; but he’s still very connected. He says….) These days, you can never tell whether the tech giants have disappeared somebody’s content; or whether they had gone silent, for other reasons.
I found nothing recent on his youtube channel, for the last few weeks.
However, below he’s on banned.video, describing what he believes may be the largest sting operation, in history. He’s claiming that all legitimate paper ballots had watermarks with a “QFS blockchain encryption code”. I get the sense, partly because of a tweet that is shown, that the watermarks may have provided some sort of monitoring capability. (For those who don’t know, the 5G networks are more about device communication than direct human usage. Pieczenik doesn’t mention 5G; however, he’s being sketchy.)
He also talks about the deployment of thousands of national guard* to 12 different states, and claims the arrest of election fraudsters has already begun.
https://banned.video/watch?id=5fa480cc65f2d419a08b54e2
* 20,000 or so
Plague Species
Why are my comments being moderated? I’m attacking no one and there were no cus words in the last comment.
Temporarily Sane
I’d say there’s a 99.9% chance the “National Guard is already arresting the fraudsters” thing is horseshit. Trump lost, deal with it. You don’t want to pull a Hillary and start blaming Putin (or Xi) and whine for four years about how your guy was “cheated”, do you?
Stirling S Newberry
This is the negotiation phase of the election. The first offer by the phants was unacceptable.
bruce wilder
the free entertainment cannot be over quite yet
“not with so much at stake!”
the consequences of the “elections have consequences” will continue after a brief musical interlude as “nothing will fundamentally change” is revealed as a program of rot and corruption not one whit less evil than the last
Stirling S Newberry
If you were in power, would you want Biden to be President?
Plague Species
It is, and it isn’t. The so-called self-described unifier cannot and will not unify anything except corporate support at the expense of the unwashed.
Scarborough is already rehabilitating all the slimy Republicans who tethered themselves to McDonald Trump, emphatically and defiantly in fact, and providing them a pathway to legitimacy again. All the while he’s decrying the Progressive faction of the Democratic Party, if there really is such a thing, calling them Socialists and calling on all Dems to shut them down and out.
Scarborough is a self-serving huckster every bit as much as Trump, he’s just better at hiding it and he’s not as skilled a crook as Trump so he’s jealous. Scarborough is so stupid, he is on record two years prior as saying Trump doesn’t really want to be POTUS and will not seek reelection. This fool, every bit as much a fool as Trump, makes tens of millions of dollars a year and has a longstanding cable news program on MSNBC where he has incredible influence on the self-reinforcing echo chamber that is the D.C. establishment.
Like I’ve emphasized many times now, they will ignore Trump and what enabled his ascendency and they are part of that enabling by the way, and in four years, the next iteration of fascism will gain power and it will make this first iteration we just experienced look benign in comparison. Scarborough is making sure any resistance to it is choked out in the cradle before it can fully form and grow strong.
metamars
“I’d say there’s a 99.9% chance the “National Guard is already arresting the fraudsters” thing is horseshit.”
I’m not sure that Pieczenik was claiming the National Guard, itself, would do the arresting. I would guess the DHS; or even federal marshalls would do the arresting; but I know next to nothing about law enforcement stuff.
Some years ago, I was walking around Newark, NJ, and went into a pizzeria for a something to eat. I got into chat with an old general, I think retired. (No, he presented absolutely no proof of his claims; and wouldn’t give me his name, when I asked. ) This guy said that after world war II, some mobsters in Italy were busted for, well, I can’t remember, exactly. I think they had stolen legitimate weapon. (I wrote about this, on the internet, previously, when I remembered more details, but google finds nothing when I search for “+metamars pizza general” or “+metamars pizzeria general” .
Their mobster buddies killed 2 Americans, in retaliation (I think their families, too, which I thought the Italian mafia wouldn’t do). The American side (DIA? he may not have specified) started whacking the Italians, and ended up killing 8,000 of them, IIRC.
He concluded, “I can go walking anywhere in Newark, that I want, and the mafia won’t touch me”.
None of this was reported in the newspapers.
If what Pieczenik claims is true, they won’t be able to keep it out of the newspapers, indefinitely. But I don’t see why we won’t know within a day or two. What would be the point of secrecy? The Italians were being illegally murdered, and the vast majority had nothing to do with the murder of the Americans.
Having said all that, it’s wise not to have faith in Pieczenik’s claims, until evidence that they’re true, appears. I posted on breitbart about the need to peaceably demonstrate and educate about the crooked elections. Frankly, unless there’s an unambiguous way to determine fake ballots, and the results are unambiguous, the fairest thing (to the citizens) is to redo swing state elections, with everything supervised, chain of custody, etc.
What is perhaps more likely is the scenario outlined in Bannon’s war room pandemic show, yesterday. So, likewise, it’s not wise to have faith in any claims of Biden having won, until the legal process has played out.
metamars
Speaking of getting whacked, I just checked the War Room: Pandemic parler page (as they’ve already been digitally assassinated from twitter): https://parler.com/profile/WarRoomPandemic/posts
and lo, and behold! Their latest youtube videos have been deleted! Their channel is still up; not so their latest videos, which I was referring to. (#478) Not sure how reliable their web site is: https://vimeo.com/bannonswarroom
Plague Species
Ignore is the wrong word. Tolerate. Meaning the Dems will tolerate Trump and his terroristic antics for the next four years versus investigating him and his enablers, arresting them and prosecuting them. The media will cover him 24/7 as they have for the past four years making his deferred-by-four-years reelection in 2024 a sure bet all the while making huge bank on the ratings as Trump travels the country on a four year term of barnstorming rallies where he incites violence and strife as Biden and the Dems turn a blind eye as any good unifier, read spineless pussy, would do. The most Biden will do is say, “will you shut up man.” Between his medication time and naps.
S Brennan
Note; this post is not intended for the lazy minds that degrade this blog’s comment section during presidential cycles, it’s for Ian and the few that pride themselves on being truthful.
—————————-
Alexander Macris cuts through the nonsense that many are reading and repeating:
“In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail. The exact text is 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, which stated: “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o’clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.”
Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was invalidated, that much of the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void. The exact text is: “Sections 1, 2, 3, 3.2, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 of this act are nonseverable. If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”
To again put this into common English, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that said mail-in ballots had to arrive by 8PM on election day to be counted, and then said that if the Court over-ruled that law, the entire law that permitted mail-in ballots was invalid.
———————————–
In the face of this clear text, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, by a vote of 4 to 3, made the following decrees, summarized here by SCOTUS:
1] Mailed ballots don’t need to be received by a election day. Instead, ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on or before election day and are received within three days thereafter. Note that this is directly contravenes the text above.
2] A mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.
———————————-
There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution.
“The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
Justice Alito is referring to the following clauses of the US Constitution:
Art. I, §4, cl. 1, which states “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
Art. II, §1, cl. 2, which states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
Again, translating this into common English, the US Constitution grants state legislators the exclusive right to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding elections, and to direct the appointment of the electors.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court didn’t just say “Act 77 is unconstitutional.” It re-wrote Act 77 itself, by judicial fiat, creating new rules for time, place, and manner, of holding elections. In doing so, the State Supreme Court violated the US Federal Constitution.
And that’s the real case here. The US Supreme Court is going to rule that the State Supreme Court violated the US Constitution, the State Supreme Court’s ruling is going to be overturned, and the votes that arrived after 8 PM on election day will be discarded. On that basis, Trump will win Pennsylvania.”
*https://macris.substack.com/p/why-trump-will-triumph-in-pa-litigation
BlizzardOfOzzz
For all of Ian’s iconoclasm, he is a good liberal and toes the party line — which right now is exactly this, it’s over, there’s nothing you can do. It’s not over until Trump concedes, or your good friends in the deep state attempt a significant escalation. We shall see if those miraculous 4am ballot dumps from corrupt inner city Dem machines hold up to scrutiny.
NR
It’s important to note that Trump’s lawsuits are being tossed because he has not provided *one single shred* of evidence to support his claims of “FRAUD!!!!!!!”
Think about what that means. Trump’s claims of fraud are *so baseless* that *not even courts stacked with right-wing ideologues* are willing to take them up.
I provided this resource in the previous thread, but I’ll link it again here: this Twitter thread goes through and debunks the many bullshit fraud allegations being ginned up by the right.
https://twitter.com/Ike_Saul/status/1324435797374808066
Willy
Everybody here is wrong.
Dr. Steve Turley has PROCLAIMED that Trump WON and Fox is the KING OF FAKE NEWS.
Plus he’s a DOCTOR!
BlizzardOfOzzz
Interesting piece from the BBC on how to spot election fraud (in Africa). I’ll just quote the subheaders here:
Really makes you think …
BlizzardOfOzzz
NR, here’s a question to ask yourself: what would you consider to be valid evidence, if anything, of fraud? You may find that there is no possible evidence that you wouldn’t explain-away.
Voting irregularities might not be a smoking gun, but they are pretty close: approaching 90% (+5 SD over previous elections) turnout in specific D controlled cities in swing states, combined with forensic analysis of the Biden votes violating Benford’s law. We shall see …
Willy
Trump needs to sue the United States of America, for dissing his greatness and hurting his feelings.
NR
Blizzard, let me turn your question around on you: what would it take for you to admit that Trump lost? Because you’ve latched on to completely baseless allegations of fraud rather than admit the possibility that the country rejected him. High turnout among Democrats is easily explained by them being extremely motivated to get rid of Trump, but no, you immediately jump to “FRAUD!” because you can’t conceive of the possibility that Trump could lose.
And as for Benford’s law, it’s been analyzed and does not work when applied to elections. Sorry, you’ll have to go back to Facebook for different talking points.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/benfords-law-and-the-detection-of-election-fraud/3B1D64E822371C461AF3C61CE91AAF6D
Hvd
Ma ris argument is pretty solid but for one thing. The pa constitution was also the product of the legislature and so may be read at least in pari materia if not as controlling in this situation. I would also like to see what if any legislation or state constitutional provisions exist regarding emergencies and how they may or may not fit in.
Plague Species
Trump is now being compared to King Lear. McDonald isn’t fit to hold King Lear’s jock. Yes, Trump’s entourage enables him and shields him from realty, allowing him to reside in his psychotic delusional unchallenged reality, but that’s where the King Lear comparison ends.
McDonald, there is one way you can prevent Biden from being POTUS. Initiate a nuclear strike on China. I promise if you do, Biden will not be the next POTUS. That’s tongue in cheek of course, but I wouldn’t doubt it if the military let him do it. Pompeo’s all for it, no doubt, and will make sure the orders are carried out.
Let’s not forget, the Supreme Court hears arguments on the Affordable Care Act next Tuesday. It’s widely believed the Roberts’ Court will strike down the preexisting dimension of it and that’s the end of Obamacare. If Trump doesn’t initiate a nuclear war with China precluding a Biden presidency, what will Biden do to remedy the Supreme Court’s decision if the Democrats gain control of the Senate or if the Republicans maintain control of the Senate.
different clue
@Metamars,
If a tossed-suit “can” be appealed to the next court up the chain, it will be. The Trump team will appeal every tossed suit till there is no higher court left to accept it or toss it. Perhaps if TrumpMan Don himself loses his mind badly enough, he will take it to the appropriate part of the United Nations. Oh Irony! if that happens.
@plague species,
Sometimes my comments don’t appear at completely random times. I just wait awhile. If a day or two goes by, I write a comment saying . . . ” My lonely comment sits and weeps in moderation”. If it was because of a technical difficulty, or a time crunch. Ian Welsh eventually reads it and THEN if it still does not appear, I suspect it not-appears ” for cause”, and I let the matter rest. That last one hasn’t happened very often.
Ian Welsh is awfully generous, forbearing and forgiving with the commenters. One nasty little confluentroll from The Confluence has come on here at least three separate times to oVERTly and speCIFICally CALL on Ian Welsh’s OTHer readers to STOP reading Ian Welsh’s blog and go read other blogs instead, which the nasty little troll sometimes recommends by name. And yet the nasty little confluentroll has never yet been banned.
So I suspect your comments’ random non-appearance is due to technical difficulties.
different clue
( The nasty little troll to which I refer is such a Pink KKK Democrat that the Head Pink KKK Democrat In Charge at The Confluence, Riverdaughter herself, would be proud. That should narrow it down some, for those who wonder what I mean).
Seattle Resident
@Stirling
Re the question of if you were in power, would you want Biden in power could be answered by if you were a PTB elite power, you may argue that Biden is a more responsible manager or puppet for the puppet master elites than an irresponsible puppet like Trump, who occasionally breaks free of the choke chain to make stupid remarks and undertake actions that disrupt the ability of the elites to conduct business as usual–alienating and destroying relationships with allies, overt racism, egging on vigilantes and police to do violence against the left, which in turn causes riots and destruction of businesses and property.
Thomas Golladay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jp0pEU5fn8&ab_channel=Timcast
Well this will get nasty.
The rest of the world’s dictators are laughing their asses off. A perception now exists the vote is being rigged and the Democrats can’t even rig it properly. Now its starting to turn concrete.
Now the RNC is starting to come around, slowly, but Trump’s base is holding their feet to the fire. If the Democrat’s base had done the same thing in 2016 we wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.
12th Amendment Scenario increasingly likely now. Its the DNC and RNC’s last resort to avoid civil war, largely the RNC’s as the DNC knows its base will riot uselessly against the wrong targets.
Hugh
I admit it is entertaining to watch the Trumpers rail against reality as their nutzo leader goes down to defeat. That Trump was a lousy President and lied to them more than anyone doesn’t matter. They want to be lied to. They have been parroting his lies for four years. When a lie blows up or a disaster hits, there is never a moment of doubt. They rush out to provide defenses of their own for their beloved Trumpführer. This works wonderfully for him. He couldn’t solve how to get out of a room with an open door. But he doesn’t need to. The Trumpers will say that he has and attack anyone who points out he hasn’t.
Make America great? How about an undependable joke. Jobs back from China? Sure, on the backs of all those flying pigs. Trump kills 230,000 Americans, and his supporters don’t criticize him. They cheer. The coronavirus either doesn’t exist or it suddenly is everyone else’s responsibility, not his.
The pathology is interesting. Trumpers have problems that I think they would like solved, but Trump can’t solve anything. He has no interest in doing anything that doesn’t profit him. Yet the Trumpers stick with him. As much as Trump, Trumpers are deeply committed to a war on reality because reality requires hard work and thinking in new ways to change. Covering their eyes as they go over the cliff is so much easier, no energy or thought needed.
S Brennan
C’mon Hugh,
You’ve been a political hack since you showed up here; the other day you implied that the reason you voted for Biden was because it was your sister’s dying last words to you. And hey, I can’t say if that true or not but…
What I can say is this, if what you say about sisters last word isn’t utter horseshit, that’s one eff’d-up family you come from and I should know, I come from an eff’d-up family. Hopefully, it’s just a lie and that you will come to regret having used your sister death, [assuming that part of it is true], in such a tawdry manner. As I say, I don’t know if it’s true but, I pity you either way.
NL
Meanwhile in the real world – I just glanced at the Worldmeters: >128,000 new confirmed cases – a new record – and >1,200 dead.
The CDC said one can vote in person even if confirmed infected with COVID-19.
The next milestone is to determine whether COVID-19 can re-infect the same person and how soon after the previous infection. If the answers are yes and pretty soon (6-couple of years), this would imply that vaccination will be ineffective and that the virus will grind down the population and erase years of growth in life expectancy. The future populations will be younger, sicker and less mentally capable (owing to the virus effect on cognition). This may happen sooner than we realize. We will sleep-walk into this voting and squabbling with one another – the so-called elites and the masses.
Hugh
SB, as I said, it’s just easier for you Trumpers to be angry than to think. Your guy lost. He made the country worse, and you will do everything not to own that.
mago
Nation of laws and lawyers sans contextual considerations. Nation of bullies cheats and liars. Power crazy opportunists with toxic agendas going full bore crazy. A nation of used car salesmen and their dupes. (Thanks Hunter S.) Whaddya expect?
Hey, BlizzofJizz, it’s tow the line not toe. The latter’s a digit on your foot.
Hugh
BTW from today’s BLS jobs report.
If the employment build (from the Current Population Survey, i.e. the A tables) so far this year had been the same as last year’s, we would be at 161.097 million employed. We are at 150.433 million, indicating we are 10.664 million below where we would be without the coronavirus.
From the Establishment Survey, i.e. the B tables, total nonfarm jobs (private plus civilian government) were 143.459 million in October where we might expect them to be 154.844 million, a shortfall of 11.385 million jobs.
BlizzardOfOzzz
> quotes Hunter S. Thompson
> illiterate
Sounds right.
metamars
@different parts
Thanks. This suggests it might be better strategy (absent any ethics considerations) for the Dem-friendly courts to not “toss suits” out, but to just rule against, after dragging things out. It will thus take that much longer to make it to the Supreme Court. Possibly, Trump would give up, by then. Quicker trips to the Supreme Court, on the other hand, could lead to quicker decisions in favor of Trump. Meanwhile, dragging this thing out is allowing for more of the dirt to become known. Not on mainstream media (except for a handful of Fox hosts), but on the internet. So, this is a reason for the Dems NOT to stretch things out.
So, it’s unclear to me what an optimal strategy is.
In any event, I think there effectively is a hard deadline. I’m an ignoramus about election law, but I THINK that will force the selection of the President via state appointed electors. According to Steve Bannon, the Republicans hold an edge in this scenario. However, the loyalty of Republicans in Congress, and the state Republicans in Pennsylvania, are being openly questioned. Not least because Trump evidently had significant coattails in this election.
Tonight, for example, Tucker Carlson pointed out that though Lindsay Graham contributed $500,000 to Trump’s electoral legal expenses, he’s already moving to trash visa limits to foreign workers; and was somehow pushed to contribute the money.
metamars
Sweden’s daily covid deaths are at 13.7 per day, or 6.4% of an average daily death rate of an estimated 215. At its height in April, there were 102 deaths/ day, or about 50% of their average daily death rate.
Just eyeballing it, their cases may have already reached their new peak. So, I’ll go out on a limb and guess their deaths may not peak for another month. From the SAGE reference* I had posted, earlier, the UK susceptible population is <40% to <30%. If we take 30% of the Swedish population still vulnerable, then I guesstimate their daily deaths will max out at <(.3/.7)*102 = 43/day, or 20% of their average, all cause deaths/day.
* "What SAGE Has Got Wrong"
don
mago:
“toe the line”: when one lines up with others under the order to all to all place their feet (toes) on the same straight line on the floor (i other words, don’t line up unevenly.
one tows a rope, not a line
good try at being condescending when your attempt to condescend had no basis in reality
please don’t try to condescend (and make a fool of yourself) this blog doesn’t need it
don
hugh:
i\’ve learned a lot from you and otherwise benefited from the example you\’ve set here to challenge us all to do our best to realize our potentials to strive for a more just and giving world. i hope you continue to strive here and thereby continue to encourage educate and challenge me
s brennan: (sp?)
i likewise have learned and hope to continue to have the benefit of your very valuable work. i have bluntly admonished you and appealed to you once before to start denying yourself the adolescent self-indulgence you seem to relish. gratuitous nastiness. to no avail apparently. i renew the appeal. the gratuitous nastiness. do without it. try it. you might like it. you might like yourself better. i\’ll be continuing to look forward to your contributions regardless but -boy!- do you have an obvious opportunity to rise to due more respectful encouraging treatment of fellow members of this community. here\’s to a future for you (and me!) where you (and I) have risen even more to the occasion(s) even more than we have so far. god knows the world needs it.
s brennan
DfrigginT
Its entertaining to watch people pretend that Biden is going to be anything but a fascist enabler and capitalist stooge. Joe Biden said and I quote \”nothing is going to fundamentally change\”. And to say that Trump has been voted out decisively is to be completely oblivious to the facts.
Its even more hilarious that my country can count the votes of a voting public larger than the entire population of North America within a day, and pronounce results which are accepted without demur, and USA, the most rich nation of the world has to resort to mail in ballots on the flimsy pretext of Covid 19. This election was fixed and all the mail ballots should be declared invalid by any reasonable court of law. Ridiculous.
Its even more ridiculous to watch Dems be happy about this result when it is as clear as day that if someone who is slightly more competent and charismatic than Trump would come along they would be washed away. No centrist Democrat is going to beat a Republican in the future. It is going to be entertaining to watch the meltdown. Most republicans stayed republicans despite Trump and that is going to remain in the future. Dems are only relying on the population in urban centers. Once the prosperity of the urban voter goes, so goes the Dems. With the Corona on the ascendant, economic ruin looming large, disruptions in supply chains, environmental collapse, radicalisation of the voting public in favor of a demagogue and America First and Nationalism is all but guaranteed.
Enjoy the last years of identity politics and Centrism.
Willy
DfrigginT,
What country? An expat in China or India? Have you ever been to the states?
mago
No Don. Nice try. Another pseudo lacking insight and authentic presence attempting to demonstrate intellectual superiority and spiritual insight. The commentariat here is saturated with pretension. And if you’re reading this, well . . .
mago
And to blizzard if you haven’t already moved on to the next attraction, get this: You couldn’t win a food fight.