Libertarian Leanings

Sidney Powell Releases the Kraken On Media

Sidney Powell provides a brief history and overview of the features of Dominion Voting Systems software.

Leigh Dundas Explains

In 2018 Trump signed an Executive Order establishing authority to impose sanctions for foreign interference in our elections. In the video below Leigh Dundas explains how it relates to the 2020 Election and the evident fraud that occurred.

Vindman's Services Rendered

Retired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman has joined Lawfare.  Lawfare, its name implying “use of law as a weapon of war,” has been at war, figuratively speaking, against the presidency of Donald Trump.  It finds common cause with Alexander Vindman. 

The Pritzker Military Foundation today announced the appointment of Alexander Vindman as its first Pritzker Military Fellow, based at Lawfare. The retired Army lieutenant colonel and former member of the National Security Council staff joins the Lawfare team for a two-year fellowship, during which he will write a book, complete a dissertation and do a variety of other public speaking, teaching and writing.

Vindman will be joining me next week on the Lawfare Podcast to discuss the challenges of Russia and Eastern Europe policy, and authoritarian regimes more generally, facing the incoming Joe Biden administration.

The Lawfare fellowship offer illustrates a way that federal employees, including Congressmen and Senators, might cash in upon their departure from government service from non-government institutions, organizations, and companies.  I presume the two-year fellowship it offered him comes with some money, but more importantly it offers the time and support for Vindman to write a book.  Book deals can be extraordinarily lucrative, sometimes even when the book doesn't sell.  And what has Vindman accomplished in his government service that persuades Lawfare that he is deserving of their largesse?

Vindman's claim to fame is to have been the key witness in the Democrats' failed attempt to remove President Trump from office through impeachment.  Trump's supposed offense was to colluding with a foreign government to meddle in an American election.  It was a stretch, but Democrats had been stretching to get rid of Trump from the moment he won the 2016 election.  There was the Obama FBI spying on the incoming Trump administration, the entrapment of General Michael Flynn, the Mueller investigation of Russian election interference which descended into an attempted entrapment of Trump for obstruction of justice, and finally impeachment.

When pressed witness after witness admitted that they "presumed" or "assumed" there was a "quid quo pro."  None of the budding starlets for the Democrat impeachment auditions had first hand knowledge.  EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland was forced to admit that when he asked President Trump what he wanted from Ukrainian President Zelensky, (which certainly sounded as if he were sandbagging the President) Trump replied, "Nothing. I want nothing."  There was no arm twisting, no pressure brought to bear.  Aid to Ukraine was delivered, nothing was received from Ukraine in return.

Now contrast that with the Bidens, where money changed hands and influence was delivered in return.  Burisma paid Hunter Biden $3.1 million over the years.  It paid off.  Joe Biden successfully terminated an investigation into the company that was paying his son by threatening to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine.  Message received:  Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.

In a rational world the name Biden might appear in a poll question about impeachment.  But no.  At no point did a poll ask, which is the more corrupt:

1. Vice President Joe Biden threatening the Ukrainian government with the loss of $1 billion in aid unless it shut down a criminal investigation of the company that was paying his son $3.1 million.
2. Trump asking Ukraine to look into that? 
3. I don't know.
4. I don't care. Impeach Trump anyway.

The question could be put another way.  Should Joe Biden and his son be shielded from prosecution, or even investigation, for corruption because Joe is running for president?  And even when, pardon my Latin, the "quid pro quo" is staring us right in the face? 

I had predicted Democrats would not vote to impeach.  I was wrong.  Byron York described the impeachment effort in detail in his book Obsession.

Alexander Vindman was important to investigators because he was the only person listening to the call who believed something improper had happened. He reported it not only to the NSC lawyer but also to an unnamed other person, outside the White House but inside the Intelligence Community.

The other unnamed person, the supposed whistle blower, is thought to be Eric Ciaramella.  Rules had to be changed at last minute for Ciaramella to be a whistle blower.  Prior to the Trump exception, whistle blowers were required to have first hand, eye witness knowledge of alleged violations.  But in the special case for Trump, an Intelligence Community Inspector General changed the rules so that a person reporting hearsay evidence could gain the protections of whistle blower status.  The hearsay evidence, such as it was, came from Alexander Vindman.  Here is Byron York's take on Vindman's evidence.

The most serious problem with Vindman’s testimony was that much of it was based on his personal views. Originally, Vindman had seemed a key witness because he had heard the call, but by the time he testified, the White House had released the rough transcript of the call, and everybody knew what had been said.

Vindman said he was “concerned” about Trump’s statements to Zelensky—so concerned that he reported it to NSC lawyer John Eisenberg. Vindman said several times that he was not a lawyer and did not know if Trump’s words amounted to a crime, but he repeated that he felt they were “wrong.” That was when Republican Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas, a former U.S. attorney, tried to get to the root of Vindman’s concerns. What was really bothering him?

“I’m trying to find out if you were reporting it because you thought there was something wrong with respect to policy or there was something wrong with respect to the law,” Ratcliffe said to Vindman. “And what I understand you to say is that you weren’t certain that there was anything improper with respect to the law, but you had concerns about U.S. policy. Is that a fair characterization?”

“So I would recharacterize it as I thought it was wrong and I was sharing those views,” Vindman answered. “And I was deeply concerned about the implications for bilateral relations, U.S. national security interests, in that if this was exposed, it would be seen as a partisan play by Ukraine. It loses the bipartisan support. And then for…”

“I understand that,” Ratcliffe said, “but that sounds like a policy reason, not a legal reason.”

“I was making a judgment call as a layman,” Vindman responded, “thinking that it was wrong.”

Weak though it was, it was enough to get House Democrats to vote as a partisan block to impeach.  No Republicans joined them.  Since Democrats held the majority, impeachment passed, but when it got to the   As soon as it went to the Senate, the Republican majority voted it down.  No Democrats joined them.  The impeachment resolution and subsequent trial were partisan affairs.

Back to the Lawfare announcement:

It is a great pleasure to welcome Vindman to Lawfare. We believe that competition amongst great powers, managing a confrontational relationship with Russia, and effective Europe-EurAsia policy will continue to be among the most significant national security challenges this country will face in the coming years.

Few people in the United States government have risked more to tell the truth on these subjects than has Vindman.

What risk is Lawfare talking about here?  And, for that matter, what truth?  I haven't noticed anybody who steps up to lie about a Republican president, or attack him in any way, ever suffering any consequences for it.  On the other hand there can be great risk to people who openly support Trump.

National Election Fraud: Evidence of National Chicanery During America’s 2020 Presidential Election

Written By Sam Jacobs — November 13, 2020

Regardless of where one falls politically, the sanctity of the vote is a bedrock of a functioning representative democracy. Voters have to believe their vote matters. And that the vote is free, fair, and accurate.

The basic facts of the 2020 American Presidential election are concerning because mounting evidence indicates there’s been a concerted effort by state Democratic Parties to flip the election from President Donald Trump to former Vice President Joe Biden in a number of key swing states with the help of notoriously corrupt Democratic Party machines in at least five American cities — Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and Atlanta.

Here are the basic facts of the case: On Election Night when America went to bed, President Trump had a commanding lead in virtually every swing state, as well as Virginia, which no one expected him to win. However, when America woke up the next day, we found that he’d lost these leads, largely on the basis of mail-in ballots found in the middle of the night and out from under the watchful eye of legal election monitors.

What’s more, these massive caches of votes – almost all of which were for former Vice President Biden – came via large dumps primarily from the five aforementioned cities in states predominantly run by Democratic governors.

When one looks at the statistical likelihood of the reported turnout, the numbers are so improbable they’re more at home in a one-party state like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or North Korea...

Read the rest at Libertas Bella.

An Analysis of the 2020 Vote in Michigan by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai

From their analysis of the data Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai and his colleagues reveal the characteristics of an algorithm that can be invoked in the election software used for tabulating the votes in Michigan.  In a nutshell, as the percentage of Republicans within voting precincts increases, the preference for Trump expressed as a percentage decreases. 

The good Doctor, in my view, could have done a better job with his initial description of the x and y axes in his county data graphs. But from the subsequent descriptions of his analysis, it appears that the y axis is a Trump Preference expressed as a percentage that under normal circumstances varies above and below zero percent. The x axis is the percentage of Republicans in a given precinct.

The algorithm shifts votes from Trump to Biden.  When it is applied, the resulting vote totals show a Trump Preference that declines and goes negative in linear fashion as the percentage of Republicans in the precincts increases.

The Press Conference We Were Not Supposed To See

Neil Cavuto of Fox News abruptly broke away from Kayleigh McEnany's press conference on fraud in the 2020 presidential election.  Here is an excerpt from her statement:

"There is only one party that opposes voter id, verifying signatures, citizenship, residency eligibility. There’s only one party in America trying to keep observers out of the count room. You don’t take these positions because you want an honest election."

Cavuto came back on to cut her off.  It was a bit of slick coordination on the news set, cutting away from the press conference and back to Cavuto.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I just think we have to be very clear.  She’s charging that the other side is welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”

Imagine that — Fox news deciding that there are announcements from the White House that viewers must not see and hear.  Here's the video of Cavuto shielding the public.  If I were to describe him in one word it would be smug.  One word is not enough, though.  He is also dishonest.  Wasn't it perfectly acceptable to call President Trump a Russian asset?  A racist, xenophobic, serial liar?  Was anybody ever shut down for saying that?

>

Kayleigh McEnany, on the other hand, made specific, credible accusations, for which there is evidence.  Here is her full statement.

Democrats routinely invent smears of their opponents while hiding their own criminality, and they get a lot of help from Big Tech and MSM.  Now Fox News has joined the team.  But when Fox made its early call, projecting Joe Biden winner in Arizona, it drove away a big slice of its viewing base.  At the same time, Fox refused to call Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia where Trump had sizable leads and larger percentages of votes already counted than Arizona.  But as the night progressed counting was stopped in Democrat run states, and when it resumed Trump's leads in all of them began to disappear.  Meanwhile in Arizona, as vote counting continued, Trump continued to cut Biden's lead.

I think Fox has been coordinating with the Democrats.  It's speculation, of course.  But how else would Fox know to call the Arizona race, and not any of the others?  Who at Fox knew that vote counting would stop in certain states, and know not to call them?  And why would Fox not treat Kayleigh's charges, true or not — and I believe they are true — as the explosive news that they are?  Instead Cavuto's effort was to cast doubt, to dismiss as obviously false.  And then move on, promising to return to the news conference if Cavuto judged that Kayleigh would offer "details."

If there was anything left of Fox's credibility and its viewing base after the early Arizona call, Cavuto torched them with his smug and condescending dismissal of Kayleigh's press conference.  So Fox News has thrown away its credibility.  Not really a big deal to me.  It's been working at it for a while.  Recently Newt Gingrich was cut off when he brought up George Soros. 

"Progressive district attorneys are anti-police, pro-criminal, and overwhelmingly elected with George Soros's money. And they're a major cause of the violence we're seeing because they keep putting the violent criminals back on the street," Gingrich said Wednesday.

"I'm not sure we need to bring George Soros into this," said co-host Melissa Francis.

"I was going to say you get the last word, Speaker," Faulker said.

"He paid for it. I mean, why can't we discuss the fact that millions of dollars..." Gingrich said before co-host Marie Harf injected.

"No, he didn't. I agree with Melissa. George Soros doesn't need to be a part of this conversation," Harf said.

"OK. So it's verboten," Gingrich replied.

"OK. We're going to move on," Faulkner said.

Whose voice was in Melissa Frances's ear piece, telling her to cut off any talk of George Soros?  Who pulls those strings?  Fox personalities know what they're not supposed to say, or even allow to be said.  Some seem uncomfortable with it, like Harris Faulkner, but others, like Cavuto, seem to relish the job.

But there is a more dangerous consequence than the lower ratings that come from the way the media, including Fox, have behaved.  They are instilling expectations in the American public that the 2020 elections are a done deal, and Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021.  The elections  are not done.  Certification can't happen until all recounts and challenges have been dealt with.  Fox and the rest of the media can't possibly be unaware that they are setting up a threat of violence.  If, at the end of it all, Trump prevails in the courts and in the recounts, and is still the president, he will be called the usurper, the illegitimate president. We are all but guaranteed there will be rioting, looting.  Cities will burn, property and livelihoods will be destroyed, and people will be killed.  It won't be Trump supporters rioting.  Riots and looting are part of the Democrat strategy, and the media know it.

My sense of the sentiment on the right is, "We hope that doesn't happen, but if you must riot, well... bring it."  It's hard to imagine how and where this will end, but it won't be before Trump's had his day in court, and the recounts have all been completed.

Subscription Cancelled

For the first time in over 100 years, the Union Leader has endorsed a Democrat for president. "Our choice is Joe Biden*" Note the asterisk. I cancelled my subscription and sent in an op-ed piece which the editor accepted. He emailed back asking me for a "headshot" (picture) in case they decide to publish it.  Since a week has gone by and they still haven't published it, I've concluded that they don't intend to. Tomorrow is election day, and I've decided to publish my op-ed here at Libertarian Leanings.  Here it is:

To The Editors:

The Union Leader's endorsement of Joe Biden for president is nothing short of shocking.  Choosing a man whose 47-year record includes no notable positive accomplishments, over a president with four years of solid, even unprecedented achievements, is mind boggling. 

In 2016 there was no one in America, with the exception of Donald Trump, who could have foreseen our nation becoming energy independent, and that he might build off of that to broker Middle East peace agreements that included recognition of Israel by several Arab nations.  Trump inherited a situation in the Middle East leftover from the Obama/Biden administration where ISIS occupied an area the size of Pennsylvania, but then with help from Arab states he drove them out of it, destroying the ISIS caliphate in a matter of months. 

On the domestic side historically low levels of unemployment and a booming economy, pre-Covid, are outweighed in your view by deficits, which you fail to lay where they belong -- at the feet of Democrats.  The fault, you say, lies with Trump for flashing "dollar signs in the eyes of Capitol Hill Democrats."

Trump's election has revealed an astonishing level of corruption in our government.  We, who get our news outside of the legacy media, have watched as the Obama/Biden administration was caught spying upon a rival political campaign.  It is well documented that the FBI hid exculpatory evidence and falsified documents in order to get the FISA warrants necessary to continue their spying.  Specifically, the FBI falsified an email, to hide the fact that Trump campaign advisor Carter Page had actually worked for the CIA -- not Russia.

Having failed to prevent his election, the DOJ appointed Special Counsel Mueller, who after two years could find no evidence of improper contacts between the Trump administration and Russia.  There weren't any. The sad fact is the FBI knew it all along.  Recall that Agent Peter Strzok texted his lover and colleague Lisa Page that he hesitated to join the Mueller investigation because there was nothing to it: "My gut sense and concern there's no big there there."  That was May 19, 2017.

But Mueller dragged it out with the renewed purpose of contriving an obstruction of justice charge for which Trump could be impeached.  It failed.  No one, not even those indicted and convicted by the Mueller team, were guilty of "collusion" with Russia.  Those convicted were caught in perjury traps, or indicted for crimes unrelated to Russia and Trump.  But Mueller kept the investigation open long enough to affect the outcome of the 2018 midterm elections.

When Trump's inevitable impeachment came, it depended upon finding meaning that was not present in a conversation between President Trump and Ukraine President Zelensky.  Trump thwarted partisan Democrats by releasing the full transcript.  Additionally, impeachment depended upon an Intelligence Community Inspector General making last minute changes to whistle blower rules to allow for hearsay.  Previously, a whistle blower had to have first hand, eye witness knowledge.  Finally, the impeachment farce went on behind the closed doors of the House Intelligence Committee, controlled by Adam Schiff who routinely lied on cable news that he had solid evidence of crime, while at the same time claiming that witness testimony was classified, and that he couldn't reveal it.  In fact, there was no such evidence.

And then there's Hunter Biden.  It was a clear quid pro quo when Joe Biden threatened to withhold a billion dollars in loan guarantees from Ukraine unless its government fired the prosecutor that was investigating Burisma, the company that was paying Hunter millions to sit on its board.  Joe bragged about it on video:  "Well, son of a bitch, he got fired."  And the Union Leader?  "We are not satisfied with his responses about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings."

That can't be true.  If the Union Leader editorial board were truly unsatisfied, it wouldn't have endorsed him.  Instead, it ignores the can of worms that Hunter's dealings opened up.  Worse, the Union Leader is unable or unwilling to acknowledge the danger to our democracy from career FBI and DOJ officials using their positions for the benefit of one political party over another.  It used to be that even the appearance of such impropriety was grounds for firing or demanding the resignations of everybody involved.  But by endorsing Joe Biden, the Union Leader favors sweeping this corruption under the rug -- all of it.  Not only do you avert your own eyes from it, you hide the worst public corruption in our lifetimes from your readers.

The best that can be said of your endorsement of Joe Biden is that it is the product of willful blindness. The Union Leader does a much better job of covering up corruption than investigating and reporting on it.

Trafalgar Group's Latest

Most recent polling in battleground states by Trafalgar Group.

Poll	Date	Trump	Biden	Other	Undecided	Trump Margin
Ohio	11/01/2020	49.2	44.4	3.8	2.6	+4.8
Michigan	11/01/2020	48.3	45.8	3.0	3.0	+2.5
North Carolina	10/31/2020	48.6	46.5	4.0	1.0	+2.1
Arizona	10/30/2020	48.9	46.4	4.0	0.7	+2.5
Nevada	10/29/2020	47.1	49.4	2.6	0.9	-2.3
Florida	10/29/2020	49.6	46.9	2.9	0.7	+2.7
Minnesota	10/25/2020	44.8	48.0	6.1	1.1	-3.2
Pennsylvania	10/25/2020	48.4	47.6	2.9	1.0	+0.8
Wisconsin	10/25/2020	47.1	47.5	4.3	1.1	-0.4
Lousiana	10/06/2020	54.1	35.9	4.6	5.5	+18.2

OK, Louisiana really isn't a battleground state.

A Biden Victory Will Be The Triumph of Media Inspired Fear and Hatred

Could anyone have imagined in 2016 that the United States would be energy independent before 2020? Connect the dots: U.S. energy independence was a necessary precondition to the brokering of Middle East peace deals and the recognition of Israel by three Arab states.

Had a Democrat president accomplished those two things over the course of eight years in the White House, the media would have demanded a place for him on Mount Rushmore. But it's Trump who got these things done, and he did it in his first term along with renegotiating trade deals, reviving manufacturing, and reducing unemployment levels to 50-year lows. That last bit included minority unemployment which was reduced to the lowest levels ever recorded. If China had not unleashed the virus, Trump would be cruising to re-election. He might be anyway.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has accomplished nothing of note in 47 years in government – with the possible exception of the 1994 crime bill which he now says was a mistake. Forty-seven years of nothing, and now Biden is promising to fix America and bring us all together.

I have a friend who expects a “future of honesty, morality and calm” if Joe Biden wins the election.  I can't imagine it. Leftist progressives have always had trouble selling their socialist policies to the largely conservative American public. When their arguments fail, as they invariably do, progressives turn to vilification and character assassination, with “racist” being their most popular epithet. Can anyone name a Republican president who Democrats haven't accused of racism? With Trump it's only gotten worse.

In fact, 2016 became a turning point when the Democrat candidate decided it would be great strategy to include her opponent's supporters in her accusations of racism. You remember – the basket of deplorables? The racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, you name it? For the first time in my memory, a candidate attacked the voters.

Now in 2020 the media and the Democrats are doubling down. Having white skin makes you guilty of racism. It's called “white privilege.” And of course Trump supporters, by rejecting that theory, are beyond the pale and doubly racist. America, say Democrats, is rife with“systemic racism.” Hell, the U.S. Constitution is now a racist document according to our leftist press.

But if there is such a thing as systemic racism in America, it would have to be the Democratic Party. Guilty by its own rules of “disparate impact.” Disparate impact means there doesn't have to be any evidence of racist intent. Inequality of outcome is sufficient evidence that racism is at the root, and over fifty years of unequal outcomes for African Americans from the inner cities are the damning evidence against the Democrats.

There is no longer any such thing as “urban flight.” There are no jobs in the inner city, where people can work and save, and finally escape to the suburbs. Instead, there's the trap of the welfare check. It offers no path of upward, or outward, mobility. There is poverty. There are the worst public schools in the world, which deny the inner city kids the educational opportunities that we in the towns grew up taking for granted. Democrats fight tooth and nail against charter schools, school choice, for inner city kids.

Personally, I believe all of this is by Democrat design. Expansion of the Department of Education to a separate cabinet function and the unionization of public school teachers converted a system of education into an income stream for the Democratic Party. Failure is always rewarded with ever higher levels of funding. But even if it's not deliberate, the disparate impact rule identifies all this for what it is: Democratic Party systemic racism. Democrats have been running those cities for decades.

This isn't lost on black Americans. After the final debate between Trump and Biden, a Rasmussen poll showed Trump's approval jump to 46% among likely black voters. Trump began that week with a mere 25% approval. Former Obama administration official Van Jones brought the liberal wrath down on himself by saying on CNN,

“Donald Trump — and I get beat up by liberals every time I say this, but I’m gonna keep saying it — he has done good stuff for the black community. Opportunity zone stuff, black college stuff. I worked with him on criminal justice stuff. I saw Donald Trump have African American people, formerly incarcerated, in the White House — embraced them, treated them well. There’s a side to Donald Trump that I think he does not get enough credit for.”

You have to give Van Jones credit for having the courage to speak out, Granted, as a black progressive he is unimpeachable. But right after he said it, Twitter lit up with demands for CNN to sack him.

If Joe Biden wins this election, there will be no coming together as a nation, no future of calm. A Biden victory will be the triumph of media inspired fear and hatred. Don't expect Democrats to abandon what may yet turn out to be a winning strategy. The big tech/media/Democrat campaign of vilification will be back in business by 2021. Don't expect conservatives to take it too kindly.