05 September 2020

Rumors Of Civil War: Democrats Say This Must Happen

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 

The Gospels teach us there is a certain inevitability to conflict. Good will always be matched against Evil, and men will always be called to choose the side on which they stand.

Viewed against that backdrop, the civic strife that has dominated the legacy media in 2020 was always fated to happen. The accumulated disputes and disagreements of decades have, in such an hypothesis, coalesced into existential crisis of putative Good against seeming Evil.

That is one interpretation.

Another interpretation is that the orgy of violence that has racked cities from Portland to Kenosha to Minneapolis to Atlanta is not merely the boiling over of long-simmering disputes, but is rather the calculated design of malign actors as a pathway to political power. Disturbingly, this view of things is substantiated not by sacred text but by the headlines and reporting of the legacy media. When viewed as a whole and not piecemeal, the media coverage of the various riots and protests in this country presents a clear and deliberate moving of this country towards civil war.

Antifa And BLM Are Organized And Strategic

One thing we must acknowledge straight away is that Antifa and its sister organization, Black Lives Matter (BLM), are hardly random ad-hoc movements motivated by desires for social justice and fairness. The facts are clear and unequivocal these are organized and sophisticated operations with strategic purpose and objectives. During the recent violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, those arrested for rioting and looting came from as far away as "West Hollywood; Seattle; Portland; Pasco, Wash.; and Palos Verdes Estates, Calif."
The records released so far reveal a mix – of out-of-towners, of people whose home city police do not know and also locals. Records reflect plenty of Kenosha residents have been swept up in the arrests there, just as Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis residents have taken part in the unrest in those cities.
One does not simply wake up one morning and decide to travel from the West Coast to the heartland in order to commit mayhem. Travel arrangements must be made--plane tickets purchased, accommodations secured, clothing packed. Just once such miscreant so far from home indicates a modicum of planning. Multiple miscreants from multiple distant cities requires organization and logistics on a national scale. These arrests cannot be explained any other way.

Nor is Kenosha an isolated incident. Washington DC's police chief Peter Newsham noted the same pattern during the recent riots in the nation's capitol: 
Added Metropolitan Police Department Chief Peter Newsham: "From Thursday until early this morning, the large majority of arrestees, over 70 percent, are not from the District of Columbia. So they appear to be folks who are coming into our city, our peaceful city, with the intent of destroying property and hurting folks."

Even the August riots in Minneapolis after police were wrongly blamed for a man who took his own life rather than be arrested for murder saw a number of non-local individuals taking part in riots and looting.

In some cases, however, rioting is mostly homegrown. In Minneapolis, dozens of people were arrested last week in rioting and looting after the police were wrongly blamed for a man's death – he shot himself. The Minneapolis Police Department on Aug. 28 arrested 39 people, two-thirds of whom were Minneapolis residents. Only one person was from out of state, and the rest were from other cities in Minnesota.

13 of 39 rioters in Minneapolis were not from Minneapolis. That is a remarkable coincidence. Intercity and interstate travel are not a random acts, but deliberate ones. Where there is planning there is organization and logistics.

Nor is the notion of organized Antifa and BLM movements merely inferred from such evidence. Announcements, such as a proposed "siege" of Lafayette Square in Washington, DC., across the street from the White House, are direct claims of such.

On Sep. 17, the ninth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, protestors are planning to begin a “siege” of the White House that will last fifty days—right up until Nov. 3. The website for the event is planning to bring thousands of protestors into Lafayette Square to “lay siege to the White House.” The site also warns that “the possibility of a civil war breaking out sometime next year is no joke.”

BLM founder Patrice Cullors has claimed for years that she and her fellow BLM organizers were "trained Marxists".

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a newly surfaced video from 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists” – making clear their movement’s ideological foundation, according to a report.

Cullors even lays out where she received her "training" and from whom:

She described to Democracy Now! how she became a trained organizer with the Labor/Community Strategy Center, which she called her “first political home” under the mentorship of Mann, its director, Breitbart reported. 

"Mann" is Eric Mann, an agitator formerly associated with the Weather Underground terrorist movement.

It is therefore not wild conspiracy theory to say these groups have organization, logistical capacity, strategic depth and strategic focus. The public record proves all of this to be true. 

Democrats Support The Insurrection

More disturbing than the Antifa/BLM organization and structure is the support these groups have among leading Democrats in several states.

In Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers declined offers of additional National Guard resources from President Trump to quell the riots in Kenosha, choosing instead to let the rioters run wild.
White House Senior Communications Advisor Ben Williamson revealed more details of what happened, writing: “Local law enforcement in Wisconsin have told the White House they need at least 750 National Guard tonight. Governor Evers is only sending 250. Today, Mark Meadows called the Governor and offered 500 additional guard to meet the police needs. Governor Evers declined.”

Note the claim: the police in Wisconsin asked for three times as many National Guardsmen as Governor Evers sent, and when the additional forces were made available by the Trump Administration Evers refused them outright.

It is no great leap of logic to argue that willfully understaffing law enforcement this way is supporting and empowering rioters and looters.

Evers is not alone. The Virginia Senate recently voted to reduce penalties for assaulting police officers.

Virginia's senate has passed a measure that will give judges and juries more control in reducing charges for assaulting police officers. The charges can now be dropped from a felony to a misdemeanor if the officer is not harmed during the altercation, ABC 8 reported.

The measure was introduced by Democratic state senator Scott Surovel, who accused police of being "unnecessarily aggresive."

In California, Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton has instructed police to consider looters' "needs" when charging them for stealing other people's property, issuing the following guidelines to police:

1.) Was this theft offense substantially motivated by the state of emergency, or simply a theft offense which occurred contemporaneous to the declared state of emergency?

2.) Was the target business open or closed to the public during the state of emergency? ii. What was the manner and means by which the suspect gained entry to the business? iii. What was the nature/quantity/value of the goods targeted? iv. Was the theft committed for financial gain or personal need? v. Is there an articulable reason why another statute wouldn’t adequately address the particular incident?

Perversely, DA Becton is tasking police with establishing facts that are supposed to be addressed at trial, such as mitigating factors and possible justifications. The implication, of course, is that all looters in her county are latter-day Jean Valjeans, the protagonist from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, sentenced to prison for stealing bread to feed his family.

Such guidelines go well beyond the realm of prosecutorial discretion, and amount to abdication of her sworn duty to enforce the law.

In Seattle, when Antifa protestors took over the East Precinct police building, Mayor Jenny Durkan and police chief Carmine Best simply stood aside and allowed it to happen.

Protesters declared a “Cop Free Zone” near where Seattle police boarded up and seemingly abandoned their East Precinct building Monday night, according to local reports -- following days of demonstrations in response to the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The City of Seattle even encouraged the formation of the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone"--the infamous "CHAZ"--by banning the use of teargas and other riot control methods by the police. 

During more than a week of protests, police used pepper spray, tear gas and flash bangs on protesters in the area, prompting thousands of complaints about the police response, according to KUOW. City authorities banned police from using tear gas on protesters over the weekend.

Mayor Durkan would go on to describe the "CHAZ" occupation as a "summer of love." 

During an interview with CNN host Chris Cuomo, Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan jokingly stated that the area could hold a "summer of love," alluding to a mass gathering of peace activists in 1967 in San Francisco, California.

"How long do you think Seattle and those few blocks looks like this?" Cuomo asked. "I don't know. We could have a summer of love!" Durkan responded.

These are not random statements by political figures, but executive and legislative acts, specifically and directly favorable towards the Antifa/BLM movements,  rendered by elected officials sworn to uphold the law. These are executive and legislative acts with the clear, specific, and predictable consequence of empowering and even emboldening Antifa and BLM to riot more, loot more, and become more violent.

If Antifa and BLM were invading foreign armies, these actions would fall under the heading of "aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States." That is not an exaggeration.

Veiled Threats

Nor are Democrats content to merely empower and embolden Antifa and BLM, despite their obvious thuggishness (which I have previously discussed at length). Leading Democrats have made numerous statements hinting at more than a political contest for the November 3 election.

Hillary Clinton, in an interview on the Showtime program "The Circus", stated that Joe Biden, Democratic nominee for President for 2020, should not concede the election at any time, and should contest the outcome by whatever means necessary.
The 2016 presidential runner-up said that the 2020 Democrat presidential candidate "should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is gonna drag out and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is."
Keep in mind that political figures in both parties opposed to Donald Trump, figures such as Republican William Weld, have said since at least 2019 that President Trump would not leave office "voluntarily" and would have to be forced from office.
Weld, who was the Libertarian Party vice-presidential nominee in 2016 but has returned to his Republican roots in a long-shot bid to challenge Trump for the 2020 nomination, appeared on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Friday, where Maher asked the former governor directly, "If Trump loses, do you think he'll leave?" 
"Not voluntarily," said Weld. "He'll have a run at saying, 'It was a rigged game so I'm not leaving.' I don't think the military and indeed even the Justice Department — the rank-and-file, the investigative agencies — would stand for that in this country."

If that is the level of "relentless" to which Hillary Clinton alludes, the inescapable inference is that she is suggesting Democrats prepare for a violent transfer of power as President Trump is forced from office.

The conspiracy theory of President Trump attempting to illegally hold on to power after the election is a popular one among those opposed to the President. In early August, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, two former Army officers, published an "open letter" to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley which openly called on the military to be prepared to remove the President "by force."

We do not live in ordinary times. The president of the United States is actively subverting our electoral system, threatening to remain in office in defiance of our Constitution. In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your Constitutional oath. We write to assist you in thinking clearly about that choice. If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order. 

Let there be no naive presumption of what these men are suggesting happen. They are not, as some are wont to believe, supposing that the military will forcibly escort Donald Trump out of the White House. Such a scenario is laughable and ludicrous. 

The reality is this: If Donald Trump is not sworn in as President on January 20, 2021, then he is not the President; if Joe Biden is sworn in as President on January 20, 2021, then he is the President. That is the beginning, middle, and end of that discussion.

Consequently, what Messrs. Nagle and Yingling are calling on General Milley to do is to execute a military coup d'etat and seize control of the federal government by force.

Is that what Hillary Clinton means when she calls on Democrats to be "focused and relentless"? She stops short of saying so explicitly, but, against a backdrop of comments such as these, it is far from an unreasonable interpretation.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York went so far as to suggest that President Trump would not be safe in New York, and that he should bring a military detachment for security.
“He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don’t want to have anything to do with him,” the Democrat said, all but threatening the commander in chief.

As a rule governors do not make threats against the President of the United States, veiled or otherwise. Not only are such intemperate remarks politically dubious at best (and downright stupid at worst), to the extent such remarks could or should be taken seriously they are arguably criminal. Threatening the safety of the President of the United States is a crime.

Threatening the safety of the President of the United States at a time when Hillary Clinton calls on Democrats to be "focused and relentless" and when there are calls for the US military to conduct a coup to install Joe Biden as President by force of arms begins to sound like a seditious conspiracy (18 USC 2384):

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

Sedition: The Washington Post "Scenarios"

If Governor Cuomo's veiled threat against President Trump moves dangerously close to a seditious conspiracy, then the Washington Post steps way over that line, suggesting that anything short of a Joe Biden landslide win on November 3 will spark civil unrest and civil war.

A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis.

How did they arrive at this conclusion? By conducting a series of "war games" surrounding various electoral outcomes.

We wanted to know: What’s the worst thing that could happen to our country during the presidential election? President Trump has broken countless norms and ignored countless laws during his time in office, and while my colleagues and I at the Transition Integrity Project didn’t want to lie awake at night contemplating the ways the American experiment could fail, we realized that identifying the most serious risks to our democracy might be the best way to avert a November disaster. So we built a series of war games, sought out some of the most accomplished Republicans, Democrats, civil servants, media experts, pollsters and strategists around, and asked them to imagine what they’d do in a range of election and transition scenarios.

One has to note the irony of a group focusing on how to disrupt the transition from one Presidency to another calling itself the "Transition Integrity Project". Orwell would be quite amused.

Breitbard Editor-At-Large John Nolte summed up this ludicrous dreck perfectly:

That’s a nice country you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it. 

This "analysis" by the Washington Post is exactly how Nolte describes it: a piece of political blackmail, an extortionate threat that, if we wish to have a peaceful country, if we wish to avoid street-level violence, then we must all vote for Joe Biden. Anything less than total support for the Democratic nominee will result in chaos and bloodshed.

That is literally what they said. That is not an exaggeration or any sort of mis-statement. Read it again (emphasis mine):

A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis.

Every other scenario includes a close Biden victory as well as any measure of Donald Trump victory, including a landslide victory for Donald Trump.

The same legacy media accusing Donald Trump of threatening to seize power if he is not voted a second term is quite literally threatening to seize power if he is voted a second term.

This is the view not merely of myself and John Nolte, but, at the very least, journalists Paul Joseph Watson, Mike Cernovich, and Ian Miles Cheong.

How is that not a seditious conspiracy under 18 USC 2384? 

The Washington Post actually published this.

Transition Integrity Project: Planning The Insurrection

The actual "report" of the "Transition Integrity Project" (TIP) is worse than the op-ed piece in the Washington Post. This is an open undisguised assault on the very basis of representative democracy, respecting the rule of law.

TIP itself can only be described as a blatant and even shameless conspiracy to subvert the Constitutional order and the rule of law. It justifies its existence by quite literally denying that Donald Trump is the duly elected President of the United States and is instead a crackpot authoritarian dictator.

The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) was launched in late 2019 out of concern that the Trump Administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process. TIP takes no position on how Americans should cast their votes, or on the likely winner of the upcoming election; either major party candidate could prevail at the polls in November without resorting to “dirty tricks.” However, the administration of President Donald Trump has steadily undermined core norms of democracy and the rule of law and embraced numerous corrupt and authoritarian practices. This presents a profound challenge for those – from either party – who are committed to ensuring free and fair elections, peaceful transitions of power, and stable administrative continuity in the United States.

People who are "committed to ensuring free and fair elections" do so by encouraging citizens to vote, by campaigning for the candidate of their choice,  and by respecting the statutes already in place by which states conduct elections. They do not seek ways to step outside the established legal and Constitutional order to bring about their pre-determined electoral objective. The "Transition Integrity Project" is nothing more than a cabal quite openly committed to destroying the very "core norms of democracy and the rule of law" they claim to want to preserve.

Consider TIP's scenario for a clear Donald Trump electoral victory -- "Constitutional crisis" (their words, emphasis mine):

The third scenario posited a comfortable Electoral College victory for President Trump — 286-252 — but also a significant popular vote win—52% - 47%--for former Vice President Biden. The game play ended in a constitutional crisis, with threats of secession, and the potential for either a decline into authoritarianism or a radically revamped set of democratic rules that ensure the popular will prevails (abolishment of the Electoral College, making DC and Puerto Rico states, and other changes).

TIP argues that President Trump winning the Electoral College but not the red-herring "popular vote" (a fiction that even the ultra-liberal Justice Elena Kagan refuses to validate) somehow precipitates a "Constitutional crisis".

How?

Because TIP anticipates (and in fact advocates) that Joe Biden not accept the results of the election (remember Hillary Clinton's admonition that Biden not concede "under any circumstances"?).

TIP begins this exercise in sedition with breathtaking disregard for the Constitution:

The Trump Campaign had two main objectives at the outset of the scenario. The first priority was to legitimize the Electoral College results by pushing narratives that cast doubt on former Vice President Biden’s popular vote victory and portraying wide-spread protests of President Trump as anti-American, undemocratic, and promoting mob rule. The Trump Campaign planted agent provocateurs into the protests throughout the country to ensure these protests turned violent and helped further the narrative of a violent insurrection against a lawfully elected president. 

Why would any President need to "legitimize" the Electoral College results? Per the Constitution, that is the only Presidential election that takes place, period. The Supreme Court just recently issued a reminder of this Constitutional reality with their per curiam decision in Chiafalo, et al, v Washington (591 U.S. ___ (2020), Docket 19-465), in which Justice Kagan observes (again, emphasis mine):

Every four years, millions of Americans cast a ballot for a presidential candidate. Their votes, though, actually go toward selecting members of the Electoral College, whom each State appoints based on the popular returns. Those few “electors” then choose the President.

As the nine robed justices of the Supreme Court have just reminded the nation, there is no nationwide "popular vote" for the President. The President is elected by the several states, through the operation of the Electoral College. This is laid out quite explicitly in the Constitution.

This is how Democratic Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and Bill Clinton won the Presidency with less than 50% of the popular vote. Despite failing to secure a majority of popular votes cast nationwide, each of these Presidents was duly elected, because they won a majority of the Electoral College votes. None of these elections precipitated a "Constitutional crisis", yet Donald Trump winning re-election with a larger percentage of this "popular vote" than either Bill Clinton or Woodrow Wilson received in their respective first elections somehow represents a departure from the Constitutional order?

The "resolution" TIP suggests is even more ludicrous than their fallacious "problem". They propose California, Oregon, and Washington attempt to secede from the Union.

The Biden Campaign encouraged Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington, and collectively known as “Cascadia,” to secede from the Union unless Congressional Republicans agreed to a set of structural reforms to fix our democratic system to ensure majority rule. With advice from President Obama, the Biden Campaign submitted a proposal to 1) Give statehood to Washington, DC and Puerto Rico; 2) Divide California into five states to more accurately represent its population in the Senate; 3) Require Supreme Court justices to retire at 70; and 4) Eliminate the Electoral College, to ensure that the candidate who wins to the popular vote becomes President.

There is perverse irony in Democrats responding to a Presidential election outcome they do not like by proposing secession, given that was the Democrat-led southern states' response to Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860.

This is also open sedition. The Constitution lays out the rules for the Presidential election, and those rules do not include a nationwide popular referendum. The Electoral College is the prescribed method for electing the President. The "Transition Integrity Project" is openly advocating that Democrats not only disregard the Constitutional order but attempt to break up the United States in order to subvert the Constitutional order.

Indeed, against the backdrop of the 2020 election season, the TIP report can easily be seen as what Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch characterizes as a sophisticated "information warfare strategy":

Publication of the TIP report is an information warfare strategy employed for revolutionary political purposes. The strategy is sophisticated and multifaceted. The TIP document:

  • Lays the groundwork for "consensus" news media and social media narratives;

  • Rationalizes "unconventional strategies" for generating maximum confusion and turmoil over "unfavorable" election outcomes;

  • Projects accusations of unlawful/criminal conduct on President Trump and those voting for him;

  • Co-opts the (already politically sympathetic) Washington DC federal bureaucracy to support their strategy from the headquarters of every department and agency of the Executive;

  • Relies (correctly) on a low-awareness/low-energy response from the political Right to counter the TIP program.

Is it possible that the leadership of the American Left, along with their NeverTrumper allies, are busy talking themselves into advocating and promoting street violence as a response to a presidential election?

The answer is: Yes.

Chris Farrell's view of the Transition Integrity Project is as the capstone of an overall strategy to normalize the notion of political violence in this country, while attempting to paint President Trump and the Republicans as the source of much of that violence (despite all the violence to date coming in areas run by Democrats).

Farrell also views the report itself as a threat--a demonstration of the resources Democrats command and will be able to muster at the proper time:

The TIP report is itself an exercise of power. Political intelligence information and public policy strategies are being fused through the actions of TIP. That synthesis is a demonstration of real political power, and it is being implemented in a written plan that contemplates street violence to affect the outcome of the US presidential election. The political power resourced and generated from a document like the TIP report can be used for persuasion (through news and social media), indoctrination (of activists and other "true believers"), and introduces the threat of terror and street violence (to the general population) as a "normal" or "expected" outcome.

The implication of this is staggering. The Democrats, through the Transition Integrity Project, are subtly making it known they have the resources and information warfare assets necessary to incite political violence ostensibly with impunity, at any time, in any city. As they have proven in Portland, in Minneapolis, in Chicago, and in Seattle, they have the means to shut down normal city life. If America does not vote as they desire, they will use those resources to inflict violence on American cities, casualties be damned.

How can conspiracies and calls for street violence stand as efforts to preserves "core norms of democracy and the rule of law"? Such actions are the antithesis of those norms and the desecration of those norms.

Yet conspiracy and calls for street violence--calls for all-out civil war--are the stated and preferred Democratic response to any electoral outcome other than a landside win for Joe Biden. 

The publication of the TIP report gives the militants within the Democratic Party--the organizers and leaders of Antifa and BLM--both a mandate and a mission to disrupt the 2020 election through increasing violence, chaos, and anarchy. The report gives the Democratic Party's allies in the legacy media guidance on how to frame Antifa's violence, always painting President Trump as the catalyst of the violence, and the inevitable Trump Republican counter-reaction as the "real" violence.

Through the release of the TIP report, the American Left has established itself and its dishonest storyline as the official narrative of the 2020 presidential election. They have alerted the militant wing of their movement to seize control of the lead-up to election day, to election day itself, and all the way out past inauguration day. This is a campaign unto itself -- not an event. Now you understand how the Left intends to disrupt and steal the 2020 presidential election. You understand the psychological warfare techniques being used right now to convince you (wrongly) of being demoralized and weakened. You have been warned. The question for you and others in opposition to the TIP plan is: What are you going to do?

Hillary Clinton called for Democrats to be "focused and relentless." That appears to be Clintonian for "rebellious," for that is the Democrats' pledge if the country does not bend the knee to the Democratic Party.

Mail-In Ballots: The Campaign To Destroy An Election

Of all the efforts by Democrats and their apologists in the legacy media to de-legitimize and discredit the November election, by far the most concerted and the most shameful is their lunatic embrace of mail-in balloting.

The premise of mail-in voting is simple: instead of having to wait in line at a polling place, one simply fills out the ballot in the privacy of one's home and drops the ballot in the mail. This way, the theory goes, the maximum number of eligible voters are able to participate in the election, and voter participation is always a plus for democratic governance.

That is the theory. The reality of mail-in voting in 2020 is a cesspool of idiocy, incompetence, and outright fraud.

In New York's June primary election, thousands of ballots were improperly excluded, and only a court order ensured those votes would matter.

A multitude of ballots intended for the New York June 23 election were deemed invalid due to not having postmarks or arriving at offices after the election — a federal judge ordered Monday these thousands of rule-breaking ballots must be counted.

Manhattan Judge Analisa Torres deemed the plaintiffs in the suit had proven that the late votes submitted or un-postmarked ballots had been disenfranchised.

Far from allowing more voters to participate, New York City's mail-in ballots had the opposite effect, disenfranchising thousands. All told, more than 20% of New York's mail-in ballots were discarded. Fully one in five New Yorkers were denied their right to vote.

More than one in every five ballots cast in New York City got discarded in the state’s June 23rd primary, raising all sorts of questions about who actually won the congressional nominations and other races. Voters didn’t get proper instructions, the postal service wasn’t prepared, and that will leave a permanent cloud over all the results.

Nor should one expect New York's experience in the general election to be any better, as the city's Board of Elections has rejected efforts to improve the system.

The prospects for November look pretty grim, too. The Board of Elections rejected efforts by co-chair Doug Kellner to improve the system for the general election.

Nor is New York an isolated instance. Virginia's absentee ballot system sent out over half a million incorrect absentee ballot applications, including sending applications to dead people.

A non-profit group says more than a half-million inaccurate applications for absentee ballots were mistakenly sent across Virginia this week -- including to dead voters, errant relatives and even a pet -- in an unprecedented mailing flub that has heightened concerns about the integrity of expanding mail-in voting efforts. 

As shocking as these numbers are, they should surprise no one. The United States Postal Service is ill-equipped for the task of securely and promptly processing millions of ballots. We know this because the USPS itself has said so, and said so quite explicitly.

Postal workers are pointing to funding cuts and changes in rules that are causing delays across the country in mail delivery — including express mail. Their warnings are part of a growing body of evidence that any attempt to rely on the U.S. Postal Service to accurately and competently process mail-in ballots in a timely manner will end in catastrophe.

How have Democrats responded? Their response has been three fold: 1) blame Donald Trump (of course!); 2) deny the problem; 3) throw money at it.

The "blame Donald Trump" angle is the overused and hackneyed notion that President Trump is trying to dismantle the USPS to prevent mail-in votes from being cast. As has come to be the norm for these "Orange Man Bad" scenarios, the facts are rather different from the narrative.

To begin with, the USPS has been a financial mess seemingly forever, although it is not in danger of imminent bankruptcy.

The USPS has been in terrible financial shape for years. It is consistently losing money. Dems want to bail it out. Republicans want it reformed. There is not an immediate fiscal danger as current funding is sufficient through 2021.

As is always the case with anything touching Washington DC, the "fix" for the USPS is a political football--the Democrats want to fund the USPS while the Republicans want it reformed and made profitable. Meanwhile, the USPS has been taking steps to become a more streamlined (and hopefully profitable) business.
The USPS has done a bunch of regular actions that are now being cited as irregular by people who don't know better. One example is the removal and moving of pick-up mailboxes from low-traffic areas. USPS has agreed to pause it anyways to avoid the controversy now.

So eager have the Democrats been to blame President Trump for yet another "problem" that Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the House back from the August recess for an "emergency" hearing on the "sabotage" of the USPS (not, it should be noted, to address the languishing CCPVirus relief bill which Congress left hanging while it went on holiday). 

Democrats are demanding that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testify at a hearing about mail-in voting and the November election on August 24.

Speaker Pelosi specifically accused the President of trying to sabotage the November election by dismantling the USPS.

“The President has explicitly stated his intention to manipulate the Postal Service to deny eligible voters access to the ballot in pursuit of his own re-election,” the release said.

The announcement also accused DeJoy of acting as an “accomplice in the President’s campaign to cheat in the election, as he launches sweeping new operational changes that degrade delivery standards and delay the mail.”

As has already been stated above, this accusation is laughably untrue.

What is not so laughable is what White House adviser Peter Navarro inferred about the Democrats' desires for the Postal Service--that they intended to use the USPS as a "ballot harvesting operation."

Let’s think about it. First, the irony of what’s getting Chuck and Nancy back to Washington; it’s not concern about the working men and women of America, who really need our help right now. They want to come back so they can rename the post office the United States ballot harvesting service. So it’s unfortunate we get these – in the middle of the election – we get all these new cycle things going on that they seize upon. 

Peter Navarro's accusation is not without substance. Shortly after Navarro's remarks were made, the New York Post published an expose of the Democratic Party's calculated efforts to manipulate elections through fraudulent use of mail-in ballots.

A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.

While the Post withheld the name of this operative to protect him from fallout (including potential criminal prosecutions), the Post does state they took steps to verify his background and credentials.

The whisteblower — whose identity, rap sheet and long history working as a consultant to various campaigns were confirmed by The Post — says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — a critical 2020 swing state. 

This statement by the Post elevates the unnamed source from the usual "anonymous sources", because the Post states specifically they did their due diligence on the source, rather than accepting his statements at face value.

This whistleblower's activities may have altered electoral outcomes in multiple states over the years.

But the political insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears prosecution, said fraud is more the rule than the exception. His dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State. Some of the biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed. 

Let there be no mistake about this whistleblower's prior political affiliations. He worked on behalf of Democratic candidates and the Democratic party, and worked to fraudulently swing in favor of Democrats.

Naturally, state-level officials, rather than acknowledge any of the real problems with mail-in balloting, double down on the accusations of Trump malfeasance while insisting there is no problem with mail-in balloting.

President Trump’s unprecedented attacks on the U.S. Postal Service amid widespread mail delays across the country are shaking voters’ faith that their ballots will be counted, prompting a rush among federal, state and local officials to protect the integrity of the Nov. 3 election.

Rather than discuss the real challenges before the USPS with mail-in ballots, and rather than confront the logistical and systemic inadequacies of the exisiting mail-in ballot systems, these states would rather insist there is no problem and that people should vote by mail, even as the Democrats in Congress argue that Trump has fatally compromised the USPS in this regard.

For months, elections officials in both major political parties have been encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail to avoid coronavirus infection. The effort has worked, with record numbers voting by mail in a slew of primaries this spring and summer — and planning to do so again in November, according to numerous public. polls. More than 180 million Americans are now eligible to vote by mail in the fall after many states relaxed their rules.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi's "solution" is to throw another $25 Billion at the USPS. 

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) put down the ice cream and called on the House to return early from August recess in order to vote on an emergency package for the $25 billion House Democrats included in their coronavirus bill in May - along with an additional $3.6 billion to fund election security.

Whatever else one wishes to believe about the USPS, more funding is not going to make their structural issues disappear. As matters stand, the USPS is having a hard time with even "regular" mail delivery.

Critical prescriptions are being delayed, placing many Americans’ health in jeopardy. New credit cards, rent checks, stimulus payments from the Internal Revenue Service — all have been stalled. Small-business owners who sell goods through Etsy and EBay are being hammered with customer complaints because packages do not arrive when promised.

$25 Billion more now is not going to change the structure of the USPS, or resolve its logistical deficiencies. Whether it should be able to handle the delicate matter of voting mail is mooted by the reality that it is, in its current condition, unable to do so.

By drumming up yet another faux scandal over mail-in ballots, the Democrats have stirred up fears and doubts in the minds of voters over the integrity of mail-in ballots. We know it is the Democrats who are driving this ballot corruption narrative by simple virtue of the fact that it is the Democrats who elevated this to an issue of national scandal by calling for an emergency hearing specifically on this topic and specifically to bash President Trump.

Yet consider for a moment the full import of a botched and chaotic mail-in ballot general election. Assume for the moment 20% of mail-ballots nationwide are improperly rejected.

What is overlooked by the media is that the election ballot is not merely to select a President. On that same ballot is a person's choice for their Congressman, their US Senator, their state legislatures, potentially their mayor, as well as any number of local issues, referenda, and bond authorizations pertinent to a particular precinct.

Consider then, the chaos that might ensue if, in addition to the selection of Presidential electors being corrupted, elections to the House of Representatives are compromised as well. Consider the chaos of 20% of voters are not able to choose their Congress.

What if Congressional elections are thrown into the hazard alongside the Presidential election?

Keep in mind that, if the Electoral College fails to choose a President, the House of Representatives shall make the selection, per the 12th Amendment to the Constitution.

The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.

Contrary to the ignorant rantings of Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, if the Electoral College fails to elect a President, Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not assume the Presidency on January 20, 2021. In fact, in the scenarios Napolitano references, where the Presidential election is challenged based on the accuracy and legitimacy of mail-in ballots, Congressional races are equally impacted--a discarded ballot is discarded for all election issues, not merely the Presidential contest.

20% of ballots contested nationwide could mean potentially all Congressional elections would be contested. If that happens, there is the very real possibility that, come January 3, 2021, the date on which the new Congressional session begins, there are not enough Congressmen to form a quorum to do business.

That would be a true Constitutional crisis, because at that point there would be no federal government in effect. There would be no one to re-elect Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the House, and there would be no one to vote by state in the election of the President. The Constitution does not address what to do in the event the country manages to screw up the entire election coast to coast.

These are the risks the Democrats are taking with their zeal to force mail-in ballots nationwide. The Democrat leadership are all seasoned politicians, and it does not stand to reason they are wholly unaware of the ramifications of what they are proposing. 

The Democrats Know This

The Democrats are aware of all of this. How can they not know? Given the length of time most political leaders on both sides have been in elective office, it confounds credulity to believe the Democrats are wholly ignorant of how elections operate, of the logistical challenges surrounding free and fair elections, and of the ramifications of their intemperate accusations towards the President.

Yet the Democrats show no sign of stopping, no inclination to tamp down the rhetoric of rebellion. If anything, they will likely ratchet both the rhetoric and the violence up as the election nears. That is their trajectory at the moment; that is the trajectory of this election cycle at the moment.

When these facts are submitted to a candid world, there is only one conclusion that can be sustained: The Democratic Party in 2020 has abandoned the election, choosing instead for their political endgame insurrection.

If the Democrats have their way, there will be civil war in this country. In the Democrats' political playbook, this is what must happen.


6 September 2020: Updated to include detail on the Transition Integrity Project's "war game" scenarios.

12 September 2020: Updated to include Chris Farrell's commentaries on the TIP report

3 comments :

  1. Great article, and I definitely agree that there is going to be chaos around Donald Trumps legitimate win in November. The Democrats will not accept it. We need a plan to protect our rights to a fair election.

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    1. Thanks!

      The challenge before everyone is to somehow in all the chaos swirling around the election preserving the basic rule of law.

      The Constitution spells out how a President is elected. The Constitution also leaves large parts of the electoral process in the hands of the several states. Americans must take a stand to protect these basic institutions of governance, or the Republic is lost.

      Regardless of ideology, all Americans should stand for the rule of law. If that prevails, we will endure.

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  2. Thank you for an excellent article detailing what has been and is taking place in this country and pointing out the agenda behind it and the endgame planned by the marxist Democrats. Every American should read this. This has been long planned and they will not back down. Their playbook has already shredded the Constitution and rule of law. Coup D'etat anyone? The question is what specifically can we as individual Americans do to stop this?

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