Flashback: Joe Biden's Ridiculous October Town Hall (An Analysis)

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https://youtu.be/luxX9t3Ek5k

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Flashback to 1826 days Ago

From this point forward, the 2020-Politics label is deprecated. Going forward, the 2021-Politics label will be used.

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At the same time, here is a flashback video of The Andrew Klavan Show (Ep. 803) that was streamed live 721 days (1 year, 11 months, 3 weeks) ago). Here is the direct link: MSM Says Epstein Killed Himself or, if you want, here's the video embedded for a quicker trip back to the future.

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Message Everyone Needs to See

Trump Gets In Front of Cameras With Message Everyone Needs to See... Especially Liberals

Trump’s Response to COVID-19 Relief Bill Causes Internet to Absolutely EXPLODE

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Podge-Hodge

Here's a funny meme...

Here's some political stuff ...

Here's a playlist from The Classic Heavy Metal YouTube channel...

 

Here's a playlist...

 

Here's a bunch of CDs that were for sale but that I did not buy because, yep, COVID-19... sigh...

No Winning for DD

So, in the middle of an important task, the Republican Governor didn't take a phone call from President Trump. Here's the question. If he HAD answered the President's phone call, how on earth could he have a conversation with all of the press watching him? That wouldn't have gone well. Additionally, if he HAD answered the phone call, the press would have accused the Governor of being swayed by President Trump, even if there would be no evidence to support that accusation. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey Appears To Ignore Call From Trump While Certifying Election Result

Thoughts from 410 Days Ago

Reread these thoughts from 410 days ago: Confessions of a Political Junkie.
Reread these thoughts from 411 days ago:

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The transcript of President Trump’s telephone with Ukrainian President Zelensky is out, but the fallout continues. As expected, the call is damning enough to keep the Trump critics on the offensive but vague enough for Trump supporters to explain the president’s actions away. In my view, which does not represent the other writers here or The Resurgent itself, the transcript combined with other evidence against President Trump easily justifies impeachment despite the defenses offered by Republicans.

Defenders of the president make several mistakes in rejecting the impeachment option, the first of which is to claim that impeachment requires an underlying crime. As I’ve pointed out before, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Even though the constitutional basis for impeachment includes “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the original intent of the phrase did not preclude impeaching officials for abuses of office that were not criminal in nature.

At the micro end of the scale, the president’s supporters deny that the phone call transcript is enough to warrant impeachment. I believe that they are wrong. While there is no explicit quid pro quo, there is an implicit one, especially in the context of the fact that President Trump had suspended aid to Ukraine the week before. Trump laments that the relationship with Ukraine is not “reciprocal” and Zalensky responds that he wants to cooperate and buy more Javelin anti-tank missiles. President Trump then says that he wants a “favor” from Zalensky. The favor turns out to include investigating Crowdstrike, the US cybersecurity company that investigated the 2016 DNC hack, as well as Joe Biden’s role in dismissing Ukraine’s former top prosecutor.

Trump’s defenders set the bar impossibly high. The only thing that would convince some people is an explicit, Godfather-esque statement in which Trump tells Zalensky, “I’m about to make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Nevertheless, the implication is clear: Play ball and you get your aid and the Javelins.

Trump’s defenders also tend to take each piece of evidence against him individually rather than looking at the big picture. In truth, the revelations of the Mueller report, in which Trump staffers testified under oath that the president ordered them to take action to impede or shut down a federal investigation, detailed an impeachable abuse of power. Mueller explained that the president couldn’t be indicted because of Justice Department policy, but any one of us who acted similarly would likely be sent to jail. Just ask Mike Flynn or George Papadopoulos.

But wait, as they say, there’s more. We also have the president’s decision to declare a national emergency to bypass the will of the people as expressed through their representatives to Congress. This is an egregious affront to the Constitution’s system of checks and balances and, if not corrected, will establish a precedent to be further abused by future presidents. Yesterday, in a vote that included 11 Republicans, the Senate voted to end the national emergency farce, but opponents lack the numbers to override an almost certain veto.

Further, the Trump Administration has habitually refused to respond to congressional oversight, again setting a precedent that will be followed and expanded by future presidents. Like Obama before him, Trump refuses to respond to congressional subpoenas for both documents and testimony. It was the refusal to provide the whistleblower complaint to Congress, not the contents of the telephone call, that spurred Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry.

An additional error on the part of Republicans is using the wrong yardsticks to measure President Trump. Frequent defenses are that he’s an outsider and doesn’t know any better or that the Democrats acted similarly. Both are damning. If the president is so ignorant that he can’t understand the law and ethics when his advisors explain it, then he should not be leading the country. Likewise, if an Administration whose stated goal was to “drain the swamp” is looking to swamp denizens for moral guidance, it has lost its way.

An objective measure rather than a subjective one is much better for the country. Ask the simple question, should any president use his office and taxpayer-funded foreign aid to influence a foreign country to investigate a political rival? Should the president use his office to block an investigation into his campaign? If you view the rule of law and the Constitution objectively, the answer has to be no.

To check whether you are viewing the situation objectively, simply imagine that Obama did the same things that Trump is accused of doing. Republican heads would be exploding rather than offering rationalizations. That’s the next error: Tribalism. Republicans defend Trump, not only because they like his policy and his style, but because he is leader of their tribe. This is simply a different strain of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The bottom line here is that there is an abundant record of abuses of office by President Trump. Some would justify impeachment on their own, but taken as a whole, they provide a strong argument that the president should be removed from office. He is simply is not trustworthy with the power that he has been granted.

In fact, the case against Trump is much stronger than the cases against the two previously impeached presidents. Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury, an offense that even many Republicans felt could have been handled by censure, and Andrew Johnson was impeached for appointing a replacement cabinet official without congressional consent. Quinn Hillyer makes a detailed comparison of other incidents where impeachment was considered in the Washington Examiner. Trump’s case is stronger than any of them. As Erick Erickson pointed out, the case is likely to become stronger when the whistleblower complaint drops.

Trump’s abuses of power, encroachment on congressional authority, and failure to accept congressional oversight have essentially left Congress no choice but to impeach or accept a diminished role. While I cannot say for sure that impeachment is politically wise or good for the country, it is clearly justified by President Trump’s actions. If impeachment is not justified for President Trump, it may as well be written out of the Constitution. Especially for a party that claims to favor the rule of law and the Constitution, an elected official should be held to a higher standard, not graded on a curve.

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Editor's Note: This is the source: https://theresurgent.com/2019/09/26/why-impeachment-is-justified

Going 1984

The Left Goes 1984

Trump’s Supporters 'Must Be Removed From Our Society' Says Keith Olbermann

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Funny and Truthful in Two Phone Calls

We've been getting too many phone calls from organizations associated with political parties. Because I worked as a telemarketer as well as an "Executive Interviewer" in my career, I tend to at least listen to the person on the other end of the phone - as long as it is an actual person and not an automated script. I don't pretend that what I say actually matters to the person on the other end as, because of the work I've been paid to do in those aforementioned roles, I know that the person on the other end sees my name and information as "just one more phone call I have to complete" before going home. I get it and, very sincerely, I have sympathy for the person on the other end of the phone who is being paid to call me. So, yesterday, I answered the phone twice.

I thought I was funny.

The first time, the person on the other end verified who I was and if I was registered to vote. Then she asked if I commented on political issues online or had a blog that talked about political issues. I paused and said, "Yes, I can answer yes to that question" because of this blog.

I thought I was truthful.

The second time, the person on the other end asked to speak to Megan. I typically pause when someone asks for her. I don't give out her number - ever. I tell the truth, "She doesn't live here anymore." The person on the other end said, softly, "I'm sorry to hear that." I think the person on the other end thought Megan had died or something tragic. I said, "Oh, no, she just moved out. It's okay." Megan has been living in her North Liberty town house since early July. It's early October as I write this. It was the first time I ever have said that "it's okay" that Megan is not living in our house. It took me by surprise to hear myself saying that, but I firmly believe that sometimes the truest form of honesty comes out of me when I am talking to someone who doesn't know me - I'm not saying I'm a liar or anything like that - I'm just observing a trait of my personality. I miss Megan, but I also want her to thrive as a woman independent of her father.

This is S C A R Y Stuff - Especially what HRC says!

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49 Days Until ... What? Peace and Civility in Race Relations?

Today, Erick Erickson's column knocks it out of the ballpark directly into the end zone where the NFL has become home to making political statements both on and off the field. I don't want to digress into that topic but I can't be silent. I don't agree that there is "systemic racism" in America. I believe that there are racists in America, and they suck. I'll be specific: the neo-Nazis, the KKK, the White Supremacists, and, I'll say it because I believe it: the Black Lives Matter organization. I am trying to be very specific here and say that I believe any person with dark pigmentation matters, but I do not think the group that calls themselves Black Lives Matter has pure intentions.

Erickson's column's title alone made me giggle a little: America's Systemic Racism Conspiracy. Once again, if you have noticed on this blog, I often sing the praises of Erick Erickson - he is one of my favorite modern political writers.

In Erickson's column, there is a reference to another column. I've included both links below but don't go look at them yet. I want to say something very carefully.

The 2020 election is 7 weeks from today. Yesterday, Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for president, condemned the unprovoked shooting of two police officers in CA. He condemned "all violence." I have pondered that. When Joe Biden entered the presidential campaign, he was very specific that the reason he was doing so was because President Trump stated that there were good people on "both sides" and upon hearing that, Biden felt like he needed to help America. Biden is not going to help America. His statement about the shooting in CA does not mention the organization Black Lives Matter. I think he should have said that, specifically, not because a member of that organization committed the shooting he was releasing a statement about, but because, as an organization, I believe the Black Lives Matter organization will not ever be satisfied. For example, a building that said "Black Owned Business" in Minneapolis, MN, was not spared. A former police officer, who was black, was killed in St. Louis when he went to check on a pawn shop. There are other cases I could cite but today, I'm citing those two specific cases.

All of that leads me to Erickson's column - I encourage you to read it, even if you disagree with every word he writes: America's Systemic Racism Conspiracy. Make sure to also read this column, which Erickson references in his column: Racism Is Real. But Is “Systemic Racism”? That Time I Was Published by Newsweek—For Two Hours - Public Discourse.

I'm just stating the obvious: I have a specific school of thought about politics and those thoughts have been shaped by reading both Liberal and Conservative writers. In 2016, I did not vote for HRC; I did not vote for Donald J. Trump. I voted for a third-party candidate whose platform and beliefs aligned with mine. Originally, this was my lead paragraph, but then I decided I should bury the lead today. <GRIN>

News

EE Part II

Lord, you are vast beyond what my brain can fathom. Your wisdom extends beyond the combined brains of all creatures on Earth.

I love you more than any other possession or any talent that you have gifted to me. Praise be to you forever. Allow me to make a humble request.

If you deem it, grant that the technical writing I write today matches or exceeds the talent you have bestowed upon Erick Erickson.

May your will be done forever, until the end of days.

Amen.

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Yep, I Did

Erick-Woods Erickson

I watched it. I want to talk about mail-in ballots vs. absentee ballots instead, but duty calls.

I sat in a bathtub, had a few beers, and watched that Zoom call. I figured doing it that way gave me the option to drown if the Zoom call became too painful. You know what? I actually liked the roll call of states, except Texas. I expected big hats and the Alamo and got El Paso protest mural activism. Texas ain’t going Joe Biden now.

I’m confused about how the Northern Marianas Islands cast a vote when the vote was scheduled for August 18th and they were already August 19th, but we’ll let that pass. It was well done.

But forgive me — you want me to vote for Biden and trot out all the Democrats and Republicans who have collectively screwed up American foreign policy for the last twenty years ignoring an emboldened communist Chinese regime and an aggressive Russian regime? You people screwed up our foreign policy, weakened us, apologized for our might, and want us to vote for Biden?

Nope.

Clinton was Clinton and we disagree on a lot, but the man still has a level of political charisma. He knew he needed to make the job application case and I thought he did a good job, but wow has he aged and he is still younger than Biden!

The Carter bit was sad. You heard them but did not see them. You can tell they have hit the age of uncertainty beyond the day. It is sad.

The Jill Biden stuff was strategically brilliant. Donald and Melania Trump do not have that sort of relationship and, frankly, given the age disparity, it’d probably gross people out to see them behave like the Bidens. But that is for the Bidens to capitalize on. I think they’re going to try to make this the Joe and Jill Show with a side of Kamala and I suspect it is going to be effective for suburban women, i.e. the President’s “suburban housewives” who really aren’t fans of the idea of seeing husbands cavorting with their third wives.

The GOP needs to figure out a way to shine more — I suggest live audiences if they can. I still think the President from the South Lawn is a bad and unimaginative idea. The roll call of the states gives the GOP something to consider.

The President needs Bill Shine doing this.

One last note before getting to ballots.

I actually think the Bidens are nice people. Spare me your outrage about how their sins are worse than your own so they are terrible bad people or they have a political position or did something you hate so you hate them. You don’t know them. You are a sinner too. I speak at the civil, civic level where Americans of different politics should be able to be kind to one another. You’re a giant sinner too so spare me.

They are nice people. I know military families the Bidens have helped and they have implored these families to stay quiet lest their private help is seen as political. They were sincere in offering help and I find that deeply commendable. You won’t see these families on the campaign trail. None of them are Democrats. But I suspect they’ll all vote for the Bidens because they dearly love them for their help.

I am a sucker for the stories never told on both sides of the aisle and I like to know that people I may fiercely disagree with politically are still people who’d give someone the shirt off their back if it’d help.

Jill Biden will be an asset on the trail. AOC will not. She did her level best to sabotage the brand last night. It was kind of funny to see.

Now, having reviewed last night, let’s get to the real big issue.

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EE Part 1

Lord, you are vast beyond what my brain can fathom. Your wisdom extends beyond the combined brains of all creatures on Earth.

I love you more than any other possession or any talent that you have gifted to me. Praise be to you forever. Allow me to make a humble request.

If you deem it, grant that the technical writing I write today matches or exceeds the talent you have bestowed upon Erick Erickson.

May your will be done forever, until the end of days.

Amen.

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Mail In Ballots vs. Absentee Ballots

by Erick Erickson

“Erickson,” you might ask, “why should I listen to you?”

Well, let me tell you a little story.

Two hours south of Atlanta, across the Flint River, and through pine stands hiding ten-point bucks and turkeys, sits Butler, Georgia in Taylor County. It’s a town with a NAAPA Auto Parts store, the back of which is the most awesome gun store you’ll ever encounter. Hollywood celebrities have flown down there to buy guns.

It is hot, has gnats, and has a small courthouse on the square with a Confederate soldier fixed in time above a pedestal facing North, ever vigilant until Cancel Culture arrives. Butler is home to the first and last cases I ever tried. My last case, in 2005, was a probate case that had been going on since 1905. The descendants of a sharecropper had kept their ancestor’s case in court so white men couldn’t steal the land and finally, someone wanted their acre of land to build on.

My first case involved the challenge of an election where the incumbent Clerk of Superior Court lost by nineteen votes.

You see, dear readers, I was an elections attorney and as a law student helped revised Georgia’s election law. I was only just out of law school and had not yet been sworn in officially, but my law firm roped me into the case because I knew the law, the lawyer on the other side was fine with me doing it because I was just out of law school and he was a city slicker lawyer who went to Auburn and thus knew everything, and the judge just didn’t give a crap. The world was focused on whether George Bush or Al Gore would be President and we were focused on whether the Clerk of Court would keep his job.

My law firm represented Taylor County in defense of the election and in opposition to throwing out the election. The city slicker lawyer thought with a 19 vote margin all he needed to do was find nineteen people who had issues with voting and he could throw out the case.

To make a long story short, actually, there’s a mathematical formula that must be used because you are not allowed to ask anyone how they voted and you cannot presume everyone voted in the race. So you must find the total number of people who voted overall, the total number who voted in that race, the difference between those numbers, and then add the difference between the two candidates. So, in other words, to get real interference in a race where 1000 voted, but only 750 voted in that particular race, you need to discredit 250 votes plus 19 votes for a total of 269 discredited votes. Again, you do this because you cannot presume everybody voted in your race nor can you ask anyone how they voted. The privacy of the ballot is sacrosanct.

In this case, the plaintiff needed about 105 votes, but I was the only one in the room who knew that. He went for 19.

One of those votes was the absentee vote of a dead man who died the day after the election. The man’s sister was called to the stand. It was very clear the man’s absentee ballot signature did not match his voter registration card from the 1950’s. In Georgia, a voter must sign their absentee ballot and only the voter can sign the absentee ballot.

“Ma’am,” city slicker began, “I want to show you your brother’s voter registration card. Do you see that?”

Like the scene from My Cousin Vinny, the elderly black lady put on her coke bottle glasses, and her eyes got large.

“Yes sir,” she said.

“Now ma’am, I’d like to show you your brother’s absentee ballot. Do you see that signature?”

“Yes sir,” she replied.

“Ma’am, do those signatures look alike?” city slicker asked.

“No, they don’t,” she replied.

“Ma’am, do you think your brother signed his absentee ballot?” city slicker asked.

“I know he didn’t. I did it,” she said matter of factly.

“Ma’am, can you read what it says under the signature line?” city slicker asked.

“It says only the voter is allowed to sign his absentee ballot and it is a violation of Georgia law for anyone other than the voter to do so,” she said with her voice beginning to crack.

“Ma’am, are you admitting under Georgia law that you broke the law and signed your brother’s ballot?” city slicker asked.

She began to sob.

“I did it. I had to do it,” she said getting more emotional.

The judge intervened.

“Ma’am, you aren’t in trouble today. This is just an inquiry. Did your brother cast his own ballot?” the judge asked as calmly and reassuringly as possible.

“Yes,” she said. “I filled in the dots, but he told me who to vote for and he watched me. That’s how we always did it.”

“And why did you do it that way,” asked the judge.

“Because he done got both his hands ripped off in a cotton gin,” she said exasperated.

City slicker never got to 105 votes. He didn’t even get to nineteen.

Another guy admitted he had been intimidated and when the judge sealed up the courtroom, throwing out everyone except the lawyers, the man said he had admitted he was intimidated because “I ain’t ever been in no courtroom” he blurted out. The lawyer just presumed the man had been intimidated into a vote.

While the rest of the world was focused on Bush v Gore, I was focused on this hilarious trial in the middle of nowhere.

I know of which I speak on mail-in ballots and absentee ballots and there’s some serious B.S. going on across news programs and op-eds in America.

“Mail-in ballots” are like humans — they come in various forms. “Absentee ballots” are a specific creature.

Generally speaking, each of the fifty states has its own rules on mail-in ballots. Some states, like Oregon, mail ballots to all of its registered voters automatically. Other states require a ballot request. Most states require that ballots be returned by election day. Some states, like California, require they be postmarked by election day, potentially pushing results for two weeks.

It varies by state.

Some states now want to change the rules, but it is generally accepted in federal jurisprudence that states cannot change the rules of an election in the middle of said election. So, for example, Nevada has decided to send ballots to every voter by mail, not just those who request it. That is a big change. But, Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State did that anyway in June without legislative authority so the GOP has a tough argument there.

The bigger issues are vote harvesting, postage stamps, dates of receipt, and signatures.

Vote harvesting is where people can come to your home and offer to collect your ballot for you. Yes, Virginia, there can be fraud here. Can you imagine also Stacey Abrams’ wild claims if white Republicans went door to door in black neighborhoods in Georgia offering to ferry ballots to the mailbox? The media will treat those as serious efforts at voter intimidation, but totally ignore union activists doing the same. And union activists do it all the time.

Banning vote harvesting would be a step in the right direction — require only the voter or his immediate family can transport a ballot to a board of elections or a mailbox.

Postage stamps have always been required to return a ballot by mail, but now suddenly after years of requiring it, Democrats believe it is a poll tax. They just keep moving the goal post and frankly, if they keep moving the goal post as much as they are on the issue, we should all be suspicious. It is not a poll tax because you do not have to vote that way. You can still show up at an elections precinct unless the Democrats cancel those.

Dates of receipt are a big issue because Democrats would have you believe a voter who waits till election day to drop his ballot in the mail is somehow being responsible. The reality is we need certainty in our election and waiting days, if not weeks, for a ballot to arrive expands uncertainty. Likewise, for all the Democrats who believe Russia stole the 2016 election, allowing ballots to float through a mail system for days after the election is asking for trouble and conspiracy mongering.

The strongest security on an absentee ballot is the voter’s signature, which must match a voter registration card. But some voters’ cards are decades old. Signatures change. I am one of those voters whose signature has changed from the time I registered to now. It is a highly subjective test.

There are ways to make mail-in balloting more secure. Again, we just went through an election where Democrats, by faith, believe the Russians stole the election, but they’re now advocating for a system with multiple points of possible disruption including a bellyaching belief that a single man in Washington can slow the mail enough to steal the election.

These are not serious people with serious arguments.

Absentee ballots distributed by request and required to arrive on time with a stamp on or before election day is possible. Done in conjunction with precinct voting on election day and a ban on vote harvesters coming to your door could help.

But spare me the talking point that all mail-in ballots and absentee ballots are the same. I’m ashamed to see reporters peddling that. There’s a fundamental difference between mailing every registered voter a ballot and mailing only to those who requested them. There’s a fundamental difference between cleaning up the rolls so ballots are going to the wrong address and never aggressively maintaining a clean voter file. There are lots of differences, but the Democrats and some members of the media don’t seem to know to care.

The bottom line is that we should not change the rules in the middle of the election and just mail every voter a ballot, particularly when some states have not been good at cleaning up their voter rolls. We fundamentally should not do this unless we are going to ban non-family members from showing up at people’s homes offering to collect their ballots.

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