Month: December 2020

The Washington Post: “Trump and his allies are approaching nearly 50 losses in four week”s

The Washington Post has a good article today summarizing the current state of Trump’s numerous legal challenges to overturn the election results in 6 states. Again and again, judges continue to dismiss these cases as frivolous and without warrant.

Yes, the Right Wing propaganda machine continues to work overtime. But it is important to remember that bare assertions (like those repeated by Rudy Giuliani) are not arguments, nor are they evidence. Convincing arguments require evidence — especially in court. And that is what Trump’s lawyer continually fail to provide.

Listening to people who repeat the things we want to hear is not the way to LEARN anything. Nor is it the way to craft public policy. 

However, rote repetition IS a pivotal tool for political propaganda. It can convince people of almost anything, evidence free. Just repeat it over and over again…

Sadly, this is the nature of “public discourse” in our country for the foreseeable future. All information is now “stove-piped.” The stovepipes consists of the individual’s political ideology.

Conservatives watch Fox, OAN, and Newsmax. Democrats watch MSNBC or CNN. Each group is fed tailored information conveniently packaged in the way they each prefer to consume information.

Ideological preferences determine what pieces of select information, often distorted and manipulated, viewers/readers receive. People pay attention to the information outlet that tells them what they already believe and want to hear.

As long as these patterns of media and personal, social behavior continue, the American people will remain hopelessly divided. There is no way around it, and our political, regulatory powers are too ineffective, feckless, and greedy to do anything about it.

Since The Washington Post article is hidden behind a subscription wall, I will post the entire article here. Or you can read it here. It is written by Anna Brugmann, Keith Newell, Tobi Raji, Aaron Schaffer and Maya Smith:

President Trump and his allies faced a crush of defeats in post-election litigation Friday, a further sign of their ongoing failure to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory through the courts and to gain traction through baseless claims of widespread fraud.

Just over a month after the Nov. 3 election, the Trump campaign and other Republicans suing over Biden’s win were dealt court losses across six states where they have tried to contest the results of the presidential race — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Judges ruled decisively that Trump’s side has not proved the election was fraudulent, with some offering painstaking analyses of why such claims lack merit and pointed opinions about the risks the legal claims pose to American democracy.

“It can be easy to blithely move on to the next case with a petition so obviously lacking, but this is sobering,” wrote Justice Brian Hagedorn of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, agreeing with the court’s decision not to hear a lawsuit filed by a conservative group that sought to invalidate the election in that state.

“The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen,” added Hagedorn, who is part of the court’s conservative wing. “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. . . . This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”

Two of the biggest defeats took place in Arizona and Nevada, where judges tossed full-scale challenges to the states’ election results filed by the Republican Party and the Trump campaign, respectively. Both judges noted in their opinions that the plaintiffs did not prove their claims of fraud.

In a detailed, 35-page decision, Judge James T. Russell of the Nevada District Court in Carson City vetted each claim of fraud and wrongdoing made by the Trump campaign in the state and found that none was supported by convincing proof. The judge dismissed the challenge with prejudice, ruling that the campaign failed to offer any basis for annulling more than 1.3 million votes cast in the state’s presidential race.

The campaign “did not prove under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted, or legal votes were not counted at all, due to voter fraud, nor in an amount equal to or greater than” Biden’s margin of victory, which was about 33,600 votes, Russell wrote.

During a court hearing Thursday afternoon, Trump campaign lawyer Jesse R. Binnall said the Nevada election had been “stolen” from Trump and claimed a “robust body of evidence” supported his conclusion.

Among its allegations, the campaign claimed that more than 61,000 people voted twice or from out-of-state.

In his ruling, Russell concurred with election officials and academic experts that there is no evidence for this, and specifically dismissed witness declarations that had been touted by the campaign, calling them “self-serving statements of little or no evidentiary value.”

The judge added that the campaign’s so-called expert testimony “was of little to no value,” and called a claim of ballot-stuffing in broad daylight — made by one anonymous person and not corroborated by anyone else — “not credible.”

In a statement, the Nevada Republican Party said it intended to immediately appeal the ruling to the state’s highest court.

For his part, Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford, a Democrat, cheered the decision and called on members of Trump’s team to submit a formal complaint of voter fraud to his office — accompanied by details and evidence.

“Absent such a complaint and supporting evidence, these claims of widespread voter fraud remain baseless,” Ford said in a statement.

“This election is over,” he added. “President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris won Nevada, and Nevadans can remain confident that their voices have been heard.”

The Trump campaign’s strategy of using the courts to change the result of the presidential election — which has involved dozens of lawsuits in six states — has so far been a complete failure, as lawyers for the president and his allies repeatedly failed to present credible evidence of wrongdoing that would justify invalidating millions of votes in swing states. Trump and his allies are approaching nearly 50 losses in four weeks, according to a tally by Democratic attorney Marc Elias.

In an interview with Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs on Friday, Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani dismissed the Nevada loss, saying the campaign would appeal but that “Nevada’s not critical to us.” Instead, he said the campaign was pinning its hopes on efforts in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and, “boy, on Wisconsin.”

However, the Trump campaign already suffered defeat at the Wisconsin Supreme Court this week. And in federal court, District Judge Brett H. Ludwig expressed skepticism Friday about Trump’s arguments as he held an initial status hearing in a suit seeking to overturn Biden’s victory there.

While the hearing largely dealt only with setting a rapid schedule of filings and hearings next week, Ludwig — a Trump nominee who took the bench only in September — noted that the president has requested “extraordinary” relief.

He added that he had a “very, very hard time” seeing why Trump brought the action in federal court. Ludwig also termed a Trump request to “remand” the election back to the state legislature “bizarre.”

Meanwhile, in Arizona, Judge Randall Warner of the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled Friday that he found “no misconduct, no fraud and no effect on the outcome of the election” in a suit brought by the Arizona Republican Party and its chairwoman, Kelli Ward.

Warner found that GOP lawyers had identified nine mistakes during an inspection of 1,626 ballots that had been duplicated because the originals were damaged or could not be scanned. But those few errors did not amount to a widespread problem that cast doubt on Biden’s winning margin of more than 10,000 votes — or demand the “extraordinary act” of annulling the more than 3.3 million votes cast by Arizonans, he ruled.

 

Gideon Levy: “Israel’s War on Palestinian Children”

Gideon Levy, intrepid Israeli journalist for Haaretz newspaper

Gideon Levy is one of the bravest and most honest journalists in Israel. He writes for the daily newspaper Haaretz. Here is his most recent article on the Israeli army and its brutal treatment of Palestinian children.

I have visited the Al-Arroub refugee camp and spent a pleasant afternoon with a family there. All three sons had been arrested, beaten by Israeli soldiers. One had been shot. All for no particular reason:

Last week, we were in the Al-Arroub refugee camp, searching for an open area in which to sit, for fear of the coronavirus. There wasn’t one. In a camp in which house touches house, whose alleys are the width of a man and strewn with garbage, there’s nowhere to sit outside. One can only dream of a garden or a bench; there isn’t even a sidewalk. This is where Basel al-Badawi lives. A year ago, soldiers shot his brother dead, before his eyes, for no reason. Two weeks ago, Basel was snatched from his bed on a cold night and taken, barefoot, for questioning. We sat in his family’s cramped home and realized there was no “out” to go to. While we were there, Israeli soldiers blocked the entrance to the camp, as they occasionally do, arbitrarily, and the sense of suffocation only grew.

Basel Al Badawi in his home, with photo of Omar hanging on the wall, in Al Arroub refugee camp, November 2020. Credit: Alex Levac

This is Basel’s world and this is his reality. He is 16, a bereaved brother, who was abducted from his bed in the dark of night by soldiers. He has nowhere to go to except for school, which is closed for part of the week due to COVID-19. Basel is free now, more fortunate than certain other children and teenagers. Around 170 of them are currently detained in Israel. Other children are shot by soldiers, wounded and sometimes killed, with no distinction made between children and adults – a Palestinian is a Palestinian – or between a life-threatening situation and a “public disturbance.”

On Friday they killed Ali Abu Alia, a 13-year-old boy. It was a lethal shot to the abdomen. No one could remain indifferent to the sight of his innocent face in photographs, and his last picture – in a shroud, his face exposed, his eyes closed, as he was carried to burial in his village. Ali, as he did every week, went with his friends to demonstrate against the wild and violent outposts that sprouted out of the settlement of Kokhav Hashahar, taking over the remaining land of his village, al-Mughayir. There is nothing more just than the struggle of this village, there is nothing more heinous than the use of lethal force against protesters and there is no possibility that shooting Ali in the abdomen could have been justifiable. In Israel, of course, no one showed any interest over the weekend in the death of a child, one more child.

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian teenager Ali Abu Alia during his funeral in the village of Mughayir near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on December 5, 2020. Credit: ABBAS MOMANI/AFP

Up until the current school year, around 50 children from the shepherding community of Ras a-Tin studied at the school in al-Mughayir, the village of the deceased boy. They had to walk about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) each day, round trip, to attend. This year their parents, with the help of a European Commission aid organization based in Italy, built them a modest, charming school in the village. Israel’s Civil Administration is threatening to demolish it, and in the meantime it is harassing the pupils and teachers with surprise visits to check whether the toilets had been, God forbid, connected to a water pipe – in a village that was never connected to the power grid or the water supply. The children of Ras a-Tin must have known Ali, their former classmate, now dead.

The children did not know Malek Issa, of Isawiyah, in East Jerusalem. The 9-year-old boy lost an eye after it was hit by a sponge-tipped bullet fired by an Israeli police officer. On Thursday the Justice Ministry department that examines allegations of police misconduct announced that no one would be charged in the shooting, after 10 months of intensive investigation. It was enough for the policemen involved to claim that stones had been thrown at them, perhaps one of them hit the boy. But no video shows stones being thrown, nor is there any other evidence of this. Ali’s killers can also sleep in peace: No one will prosecute them. All they did was to kill a Palestinian child.

The 9-year-old Palestinian boy who was wounded in Isawiyah at Hadassah Ein-Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, on February 18, 2020.Credit: Ohad Ziegenberg

These and many other incidents are taking place during a period that is among the quietest in the West Bank. This is the terror taking place, committed by the state. When we hear of such incidents in vicious dictatorships – children who are snatched from their beds in the middle of the night, one boy who was shot in the eye, another who was shot and killed – it sends shivers down our spine. Shooting at demonstrators? At children? Where do such things happen? Not in some faraway land, but rather just an hour’s drive from your home; not in some dark regime, but in the only democracy.

What would you think of a regime that allows the shooting of children, that abducts them in their sleep and razes their schools? That’s exactly what you must think of the regime here in our country [Israel].

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn Calls for Martial Law, Repealing the Constitution, and Re-Doing the Election for Trump

Several news outlets have reported on General Flynn’s agreement with a Trump-supporting organization that is calling for the president to impose

Michael Flynn

martial law, to repeal the Constitution, and to give Trump a do-over in a new election.

Before he was replaced during an FBI investigation (which I also believe was unjust and never should have happened) in which he was convicted of perjury, he was Trump’s National Security Advisor.

We are living in strange political times. Donald Trump has cast a spell over conservatives. His word is inviolable. No evidence, coherence, or confirmation is ever necessary.

Long before the election happened he publicly stated that he could only lose if there was “massive fraud.” He never explained how he knew this or how it would happen. Only that he would.

Now that he has lost, his followers continue to belief his false prophecy, clinging tenaciously to nothing other than Trump’s declaration.

His minions continue to insist that their was fraud, despite the fact that 38 of Trump’s cases have been dismissed from court due to lack of evidence — courts often ruled by Trump appointed judges.

Though Giuliani continues to claim in public that he has evidence of fraud, it is important to note that when he is in court before a judge, Giuliani has always denied that he was bringing a fraud case. He admits that he does NOT have evidence of voter fraud!! [here, here, and here, for starters].

And every judge has agreed.

Below are several excerpts from different reports about Flynn’s call for civil war:

[Newsweek] Former national security adviser Michael Flynn—controversially pardoned by President Donald Trump last week—on Tuesday retweeted a call for the White House to declare martial law and re-run last month’s presidential election.

The appeal—made by the Ohio non-profit We The People Convention in a Washington Times advert Tuesday—urged the president to declare “limited martial law” in order to hold a new election.

The advert cited President Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War as precedent, adding: “Then, as now, a President with courage and determination was needed to preserve the Union.”

WTPC claimed the “threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation has faced in its history—including the civil war.”

. . . The retired general Flynn tweeted a link to the appeal, writing alongside it: “Freedom never kneels except for God.”

[WND News] Former national security adviser Michael Flynn promoted a petition Tuesday calling on President Donald Trump to temporarily suspend the U.S. Constitution, declare martial law and order the military to oversee a national re-vote for the 2020 presidential election. . . 

. . . The letter said Trump’s declaration of martial law and temporary suspension of the Constitution must be for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a national re-vote that “reflects the true will of the people.”

Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood also promoted the petition on Tuesday, tweeting that Trump should “declare martial law” to avert a civil war spurred on by bad actors led by communist China.

. . . President of the We the People Convention, Tom Zawistowski, said in a press release accompanying the newspaper ad that the group wanted to express its concerns that their rights had been infringed by the “massive” election fraud that stole the presidency for Joe Biden.
His claims echo the repeated allegations of election fraud that have come from the president since Mr Biden was projected to be the winner of the election almost four weeks ago.

A day after Mr Flynn tweeted out the calls for martial law, Mr Trump published a 46-minute video to Facebook calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the results in the key swing states that delivered the projected victory to the Democrats.

He also suggested a “re-vote” be held, as had been suggested in the ad on Tuesday that called for the military to run the re-lection.

“When the legislators, courts and/or Congress fail to do their duty under the 12th Amendment, you must be ready Mr President to immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law, and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections, for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a national re-vote,” the ad said.

Kenneth Copeland Goes Heavy Metal . . . Frankly, It’s About Time

No, the video below is DEFINITELY NOT mocking a man of god.

Just the opposite. Copeland is a false teacher, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a

Kenneth Copeland

fraud who exploits gullible people to line his own pockets. Jesus and several New Testament writers warn God’s people to avoid and condemn the destructive antics of men and women like Copeland.

In case you don’t the name, Copeland is a multi-millionaire “televangelist” whos preaches a prosperity anti-gospel. He owns three private jets and a $200,000 Lamborghini SUV. Of course, the opulent mansion goes without saying.

Mockery and condemnation is the only type of attention he deserves.

So enjoy:

The Evangelical Christian Director of the NIH Asks Churches to do “The Altruistic, Loving Thing” and Remain Closed

Dr. Francis Collins is a devout Christian who has never been hesitant in talking publicly about his faith.  Thoughtful, responsible churchgoers ought

FILE – In this May 7, 2020 file photo, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins speaks during a Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool, file)

to pay attention to his advise.

NPR has posted an article by Tom Gjelten accompanied by a 4 minute video describing Collins’ advice to the country.

The fact is that both rates of infection and death from covid19 are MUCH higher than they were earlier in the year when the initial lockdown orders were issued.

This past Wednesday, more than 3,500 Americans died of covid….in a single day. The virus is running rampant in large part because people are ignoring medical advice and listening to right-wing disinformation campaigns instead.

Why are any churches continuing to hold on sight congregational services right now at a time when the virus is infecting and killing more people than ever before?

All those who continue to insist that the new infection rate is itself proof that lock downs and isolation don’t work are conveniently ignoring the fact many locations across the country have never abided by the lock down measures or mask wearing from the beginning.

Below is an excerpt of the NPR article, or you can read the entire story here.

With COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths at record levels, a top public health official called on religious leaders to keep their worship spaces closed, despite rising protests from some church leaders.

“The virus is having a wonderful time right now, taking advantage of circumstances where people have let their guard go down,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “Churches gathering in person is a source of considerable concern and has certainly been an instance where super spreading has happened and could happen again.”

Collins, himself a regular churchgoer who speaks often about his Christian faith, discussed measures that church leaders can take to protect their congregations in a Zoom conversation on Thursday with Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Most churches really ought to be advised to go to remote services, if they’re not already doing so,” Collins said.

A Glimpse of Daily Life in the West Bank

Below is a 2 minute video showing Israeli soldiers randomly firing tear gas and rubber bullets in a West Bank Palestinian neighborhood.

I have witnessed and photographed identical behavior many times. I have also watched a video filmed by one of my friends showing Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas onto a neighborhood playground, causing little children, mothers, and grandmothers to flee.

The soldiers do not need “a reason” for doing these things. Their only reason is the fact that Palestinians are not Jews (even though there are Arab Jews in Israel called Mizrahis).

The fact that Palestinians dare to live on land that the Zionists want for themselves is all the reason Israel needs for making Palestinian life as unbearable as possible.

The Israeli army calls it “the searing of consciousness.” It’s similar to the torture techniques used by the CIA to reduce detainees to a state of “learned helplessness.”

Israel’s theory is that, eventually, the entire Palestinian population will learn that resistance is futile. They will learn to always do exactly as they are told; or, better yet, move somewhere else so that Israel can take all of their property without a struggle.

Attorney General Barr Says “No Evidence of Election Fraud”

AP News today released a story by reporter Michael Balsano covering an announcement from the Justice Department. It’s entitled, “Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud.”

We should remember that William Barr is a Trump appointee who has bent

Attorney General William Barr

the the Justice Department rules a number of times while in office. Thus, his public contradiction of the president’s claims is noteworthy.

So far, over 30 of Trump’s lawsuits have been thrown out of court, generally due to lack of evidence, and often by Republican judges, a few even appointed by Trump himself.

The president’s legal team has made zero headway in its efforts” to prove” that Biden only won the election through fraud.

Unfortunately, those who depend on OAN and Newsmax for their news, will never hear about any of these things…

Below is an excerpt of the AP story, or you can read the entire piece here.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

His comments in an interview with The Associated Press come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated baseless claims that the election was stolen, Trump’s effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.

Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election. Barr was headed to the White House later for a previously scheduled meeting.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.

The comments are especially direct coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voter fraud could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail. . . 

. . . Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified, despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud. That memorandum gave prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election was certified. Soon after it was issued, the department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that position because of the memo.