King Arnulf: Now, I know what some of you must be thinking… the day has come…. we’re all going down, etc. etc. But let’s get away from the fantasy and look at the FACTS. FACT ONE – The threat of total destruction has kept the peace for one thousand years. FACT TWO – The chances of it failing now are therefore one in three hundred and sixty-five thousand. FACT THREE…[by this time the water is up to people’s knees, and several have crowded onto the lower steps to avoid getting wet.] FACT THREE – Our safety regulations are the most rigorous in the world. We are all nice to each other, we never rub each other up the wrong way or contradict each other, do we?
Crowd: [As the building sink and fall] No.
Citizen:We… er… do seem to be going down quite fast, Your Majesty – not trying to contradict you, course.
King Arnulf:No, of course you’re not, citizen. But let’s stick to the facts. There has NEVER been a safer, more certain way of keeping the peace. So whatever’s happening, you can rest assured, Hy-Brasil is NOT sinking. Repeat, NOT sinking.
Erik the Viking 1989
There is one dynamic that is playing on in the challenge to the Democrat Magic Ballots that deserves more attention.
I’ve already talked about the uphill climb the President has legally here. But it’s the mountain that the Democrat / Left / Media has to conquer is a higher one that is forcing them into absurdity at best and violence and intimidation at worst.
You see people who know statistics and elections know what happened. People who have followed Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta know what shenanigans have gone on in the past and continue to go on. this is no secret to anybody even remotely connected to these cities and states.
In fact the Democrat / Tech / Media left has apparently gone all in on the idea that there is no such thing as election fraud but that any who dare suggest so must be punished.
Donald Trump is playing Elliot Ness, he is attempting to expose and stop the corruption that people have known has been going on for decades in these cites and prove that is was enough to overturn the results of an election. He will have to have a strong case, there is a reason why Al Capone was convinced of Tax Evasion rather than bootlegging and conspiracy.
The Media / Democrat / Tech left is not satisfied with those advantages. They have they have decided to go all out to prove that there is no fraud PERIOD. It’s like telling people in Chicago in the 20’s and 30’s to declare in public that Al Capone isn’t a gangster and to punish anyone who doesn’t say so.
I think this is a mountain beyond them and even if they manage to win their cases this is a moment that has within it the seeds of their destruction.
Illinois conservatives have reason to feel pretty good after Election Day. Pretty good but not great. Still that’s a rarity in this state that has been trending blue for decades, much of the reason for that is the tortured gerrymandering practiced by Boss Michael Madigan, the longtime state House speaker and Democratic Party chairman.
The Land of Lincoln’s feckless GOP, which local radio host Dan Proft calls “Stockholm Syndrome Republicans,” has contributed to the decline, doesn’t deserve much credit for this bit of success.
The big win for conseratives–really, for all Illinoisans–was the resounding defeat to the so-called Fair Tax Amendment, which would have replaced the state’s flat-rate income tax with graduated rates. Sixty percent of voters neeeded to approve the amendment to the state consitution–of 50 percent of all those voting. Despite big votes for Joe Biden and Dick Durbin, Illinois’ senior Democratic US senator, only 45 percent of voters supported the Fair Tax.
Credit for the victory for keeping the flat tax goes of course to Prairie State voters, but also for the libertarian think tank, the Illinois Policy Institute, as well as Illinois’ richest resident, Ken Griffin, who funded highly-effective television ads against the amendment. Slow down liberals, if you think a billionaire “bought” the win against the Unfair Tax Amendment. Illinois’ billionaire Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, spent $58 million of his own money on the campaign for the amendment. Griffin spent $53 million opposing it.
Illinois doesn’t tax retirement income–all 32 states with progressive tax rates tax pensions. The anti-Fair Tax ads said that retirement income wouldn’t be untouchable, and an admission, quickly retracted, by state treasurer Michael Frerichs, that the Fair Tax would be a first step to taxing pensions aided the argument of the “antis.”
This summer a federal investigation of rank-and-file Illinois political corruption implicated Boss Madigan. The speaker has not been charged. But the stench from the ongoing investigation served as a potent reminder that Illinois isn’t just mismanaged, it’s crooked. Clearly Illinois kleptocrats don’t need more money to squander and steal, many voters–including some Democrats–reasoned.
Illinois hasn’t had a balanced budget since 2001, when there was a GOP majority in the state Senate and a Republican in the governor’s mansion, despite a constitutional requirment for a balanced budget. The current budget has a $7.4 billion deficit. That GOP governor in ’01, by the way, was George Ryan, who later served time in federal prison for corruption.
For many good reasons Illinoisans don’t trust state government.
Illinois is still counting ballots. I can mail a letter from Illinois that is addressed to someone in Los Angeles and it will probably arrive there in three business days. But my state is allowing mail-in ballots to be counted if they arrive at one of Illinois 102 county clerk offices by November 17. So a few races are yet to be called. While it appears the Democrats will pick up a seat in the state Senate, the Republicans will probably gain two seats in the state House of Representatives. The Dems will maintain supermajorites in both chambers of the General Assembly. But there is a budding revolt by Democrats in the House against Madigan because of the election results. Pritzker and Durbin have called for Madigan to resign his chairmanship of the state Democratic Party. A few brave Democrats in the House have called on this term as speaker for Madigan, who has held the gavel since 1983 except for two years, to be his last. Illinois’ other US senator, Tammy Duckworth, also a Democrat, has called for Madigan to resign his speakership as well as the party chairmanship.
A weaker Madigan–and a specially a Democratic Party without him in leadership posts–means a weaker Democratic Party, which is why the Boss still has support. That’s good news for Illinois conservatives. But the state Republican Party still might find a way to squander this gift.
Other pretty good news for Illinois conservatives is that Donald Trump bettered his performance over his 2016 effort by two percentage points. Two Republican candidates nearly ousted two Democratic incumbents. One of those close calls was in Illinois’ 17th Congressional District. Despite being heavily outspent by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Cheri Bustos, GOP challenger Esther Joy King came within three points of upsetting the incumbent, whose role as DCCC chair is to elect more Democrats to Congress.
On the other hand, Illinois will lose at least one congressional seat in the 2020 reapportionment. A downstate rural district, the 15th, that is currently represented by a Republican, is expected to be sacrificed. During the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Pritzker vowed to support fair legislative maps rather than a gerrymandered ones.
Don’t hold your breath for Pritzker to fulfill that campaign promise.
Illinois conservatives need to get firmly and publicly behind two new constitutional amendments, the first one to eliminate the pension guarantee clause, so that reasonable and financially responsible pension reform can occur. The biggest challenge for Illinois is its worst-in-the-nation $230 billion in unfunded pension debt. Illinois cannot tax itself out of this mess, an insight not lost on voters when they voted “No” on the Fair Tax. Pension reform will be painful–but even moreso if state politicians continue the decades-long policy of kicking the can down the road.
Meanwhile of course the Illinois Exodus continues. The Prairie State has lost population every year since 2015.
Oh, I almost forgot. There was another victory of note for conservatives on Election Day. Voters chose not to retain Illinois Supreme Court justice Thomas Kilbride, a downstate Democrat. One of the reasons for Kilbride’s defeat was his being in the party-line 4-3 majority that prevented a redistricting reform amendment from appearing before voters in 2016. The suit against the Fair Map Amdendment was filed by a long-time Madigan ally. Kilbride is the first Illinois Supreme Court justice to fail to be retained. But the victory was short-lived. Kilbride’s interim replacement, chosen unaminously by the remaining justices, is a Democrat. Ken Griffin also funded much of the anti-Kilbride effot.
The second amendment conservatives need to rally around is another attempt at an Illinois Fair Map Amendment.
UPDATE December 6: After lots of counting, in the end the GOP caucus will increase by one seat, not two, in the state House.
Twitter censorship running a couple of tests on the subject)
It all begins at 11 AM EST (programming note DaPodcast will move to 11 AM EST for the rest of the year due as overtime will be the rule at work till Christmas)
You can watch live here (last weeks podcast is a placeholder)
I promise no singing this week
See you soon
FYI if you like what you see please consider hitting DaTipJar as that’s what this podcast is for
Update: As expected twitter immediately locked me out again as soon as I tweeted out the gnews post, what wasn’t expected was my Youtube connection dropping five minutes into the podcast so twitter couldn’t be seen doing so live.
I’m sure that was just a coincidence
Update 2: It gets better suddenly the rest of the podcast that I recorded doesn’t seem to exist anymore when I tried to save it.
If you want to know what the difference is between those of us on the right who insist that we make sure that legal votes rather than Magic BallotsTM decide election 2020 here it is
No because no court in its right mind would do that so I’m not going along with your hypothetical
Provide proof of both vote fraud and fraudulent ballots to the courts along with actions done to facilitate the same
Convince the various state courts that the level of fraud is so egregious that it requires a remedy to counter it
Win at SCOTUS either on appeal of a ruling(s) against them or in defense of a ruling(s) for them.
OR
Provide proof of both vote fraud and fraudulent ballots to the state legislatures along with actions done to facilitate the same
Convince the state legislatures of the said states that the level of fraud is so egregious that it is justified to send an alternate slate of electors with the full pressure of the national media and violent Antifa pushing back
Win the House vote (which is done by state) with the full pressure of the national media left put on the members
Scott Adams and Jay Valentine not withstanding I understand that only easy job of either of those lists is step one. While a failure to win in court won’t be from lack of effort the odds certainly are not in favor of the President any more than they were with Tom Brady in the 3rd quarter of Superbowl Fifty One. So if in the end he loses in court and Biden is sworn in I’ll be pissed perhaps even outraged but I’ll accept the result.
Now contrast that with what she is saying. She knows that it is going to take pretty strong evidence of fraud for the courts to side with the president and it’s going to take a lot of gumption for the state legislatures to be willing to stand up to the onslaught that the left will provide. Absent such evidence any chance of a Trump victory is a pipe dream.
Yet if the courts and/or the legislatures find that is the case, if they determine that there was not only fraud & illegality but enough to the extent that a remedy that eventually leads to Donald Trump being re-elected she is unwilling to commit to accepting said result.
I have to say I was surprised and even disappointed at her answer. Given the odds in her favor (and let’s not pretend they aren’t) it should have been an easy thing for her to make such a statement.
That she will not tells you bluntly that the left doesn’t care if this election was stolen, they don’t care if the process is subverted, they don’t are about illegality, they care about power, period!
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 