Tag: 2020 elections

With Biden’s New Threats, the Russia Discourse is More Reckless and Dangerous Than Ever

To justify Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump, leading Democrats and their key media allies for years competed with one another to depict what they called “Russia’s interference in our elections” in the most apocalyptic terms possible. They fanatically rejected the view of the Russian Federation repeatedly expressed by President Obama — that it is a weak regional power with an economy smaller than Italy’s capable of only threatening its neighbors but not the U.S. — and instead cast Moscow as a grave, even existential, threat to U.S. democracy, with its actions tantamount to the worst security breaches in U.S. history.

This post-2016 mania culminated with prominent liberal politicians and journalists (as well as John McCain) declaring Russia’s activities surrounding the 2016 to be an “act of war” which, many of them insisted, was comparable to Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack — the two most traumatic attacks in modern U.S. history which both spawned years of savage and destructive war, among other things.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) repeatedly demanded that Russia’s 2016 “interference” be treated as “an act of war.” Hillary Clinton described Russian hacking as “a cyber 9/11.” And here is Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on MSNBC in early February, 2018, pronouncing Russia “a hostile foreign power” whose 2016 meddling was the “equivalent” of Pearl Harbor, “very much on par” with the “seriousness” of the 1941 attack in Hawaii that helped prompt four years of U.S. involvement in a world war.

With the Democrats, under Joe Biden, just weeks away from assuming control of the White House and the U.S. military and foreign policy that goes along with it, the discourse from them and their media allies about Russia is becoming even more unhinged and dangerous. Moscow’s alleged responsibility for the recently revealed, multi-pronged hack of U.S. Government agencies and various corporate servers is asserted — despite not a shred of evidence, literally, having yet been presented — as not merely proven fact, but as so obviously true that it is off-limits from doubt or questioning.

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Team Biden’s backward hostility to charter schools

Joe Biden is expected to name Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona as his education secretary Wednesday. Given rumors about the president-elect tapping union officials for the job, this is a relief. Still, reformers and school-choice advocates shouldn’t let their guards down.

In a recent interview with the Education Writers Association, Stef Feldman, Biden’s national policy director, threatened to cut funding for “public charter schools that don’t provide results.” This, even as she vowed to fight for “the funds that our underperforming schools need, so our educators can succeed at their jobs.”

Got that? Team Biden’s position is that bad charter schools need to be defunded and possibly shuttered, while traditional failure factories just need more cash.

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Biden Names As “Climate Czar” Former EPA Chief Blamed For Flint Water Crisis

At the time of the Flint water crisis, where lead from aging pipes leached into the city’s water system after it changed its water source, Chaffetz was the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which held hearings on the issue.

Chaffetz wasn’t the only one to object. “The people of Michigan won’t soon forget Gina McCarthy’s mishandling of and failure to adequately respond to the Flint water crisis as EPA administrator,” U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Tipton Republican and a former member of the committee who took part in the Flint hearings,  told the Free Press Wednesday morning. “That ineptness alone is reason enough to disqualify her from a senior role, but her push for higher energy taxes and heavy-handed government regulations is also concerning for consumers.”

Democrats also chimed in: Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Flint Township who is a supporter of Biden’s, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon, noting deep doubts about the choice. While thanking Biden for taking climate change so seriously, Kildee – who was a sharp critic of both the state’s and federal government’s roles in causing the Flint water crisis –  said he’d heard from several Flint residents who “expressed their concerns to me about this appointment and I have relayed their concerns to (Biden’s transition team).”

“While the position of White House climate coordinator does not require confirmation by Congress, we must never forget the failures of the Flint water crisis,” said Kildee, who led efforts to require faster public notifications of high levels of lead in water systems and to approve funding to replace lead water pipes in the wake of the crisis. “All levels of government, including the state of Michigan and the Environmental Protection Agency, failed Flint families.”

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Joe Biden Declares Gun Violence a ‘National Health Crisis’ in Sandy Hook Remembrance

Joe Biden released a statement Monday remembering the December 14, 2012, attack on Sandy Hook Elementary and declared gun violence a “national health crisis.”

He wrote, “To the grandparents, parents, siblings, children, spouses, and fellow broken and healing hearts of Sandy Hook, I know. No matter how long it’s been, every time you talk about it, you relive it as though you just heard the news. Eight years later, I know the pain never fully heals.”

Biden described December 14, 2012, as “the saddest day we had in the White House,” and praised Sandy Hook parents for “working to change our laws and our culture around gun violence and how we protect and nurture our children.”

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6 First Gun Control Measures To Expect From A Biden Administration

If we have a Joe Biden administration in the White House on Jan. 20, we will have the most overtly anti-gun president in American history.

Biden’s plan lists effectively every gun control measure ever proposed: banning “assault weapons,” banning “high-capacity” magazines, limiting the number of guns an American can purchase, holding manufacturers liable for the criminal misuse of their products, and many, many more.

Out of the myriad options a Biden administration will have to infringe on our constitutional protections, which will they choose first? Based on my experience with clients and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT) as a firearms attorney, some recent news events, and a bit of firearm-industry intuition, I think the first things a Biden administration will do regarding guns if given the chance are:

  • Banning pistol braces
  • Banning homemade firearms/80 percent receivers
  • Banning online firearm and ammunition sales

Shortly after the first bans, and if he has the help of the Senate, the next gun control measures will likely be:

  • Banning “assault weapons”
  • Banning “high capacity” magazines
  • Requiring universal background checks

Let’s examine each of these in turn.

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Goldman Sachs vets quietly added to Biden transition

Two are Goldman Sach veterans. Others have worked for consulting firms like McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group along with one Google and three Facebook employees. One is the daughter of a pair of longtime Biden advisers.

They’re all among the dozens of people Biden has quietly added to his transition’s agency review teams in recent weeks, according to a review of the transition’s website. The team members — which must be disclosed by the transition — offer the most comprehensive picture of who’s building the Biden administration.

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LOOPHOLE ALLOWS BIDEN NOMINEES TO AVOID DISCLOSURES. WILL THEY USE IT?

“DONALD TRUMP HAS presided over the most corrupt administration in modern history,” Joe Biden’s website declared as he ran for president. By contrast, the site said, a Biden administration would “make sure that the principles of equality, transparency, and public — not private — interest drive all government decisions.”

It would be difficult for any incoming administration to match Trump for opacity and self-dealing. But an obscure exemption for executive branch officials from disclosing previous clients may generate an interesting test case for Biden’s commitment to full transparency.

The question is partly whether any Biden nominees will use this exemption themselves to conceal their recent sources of income. Perhaps more important is the question of whether the Biden administration will take steps to eliminate the exemption, thereby foreclosing its abuse by future presidents, Trumpian or otherwise.

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Biden’s Reported Domestic Policy Pick Called For ‘Permanent And Comprehensive Assault Weapons Ban’

Former national security adviser Susan Rice, President-elect Joe Biden’s reported pick to lead the White House Domestic Policy Council, called for a “permanent” ban on so-called assault weapons in a June appearance with two anti-gun groups.

Rice, who served in former president Barack Obama’s administration, appeared in a video with Moms Demand Action and Everytown For Gun Safety and concurred with Biden’s firearm plan that seeks to ban certain semi-automatic rifles, prohibit “high-capacity magazines,” and do away with liability protections for weapons manufacturers and sellers. Rice has reportedly been chosen for the domestic policy role, Politico reported Thursday.

“[Biden has] taken on the NRA twice and won,” Rice said in the interview with Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts. “When he served with President Obama in the Obama-Biden administration, we implemented over two dozen reforms that put curbs on access to guns, but we need legislation, we need leadership in Joe Biden that understands and is passionate about these issues.”

Rice advocated for laws including “universal background checks, the enactment of a new violence against women act, with a permanent and comprehensive ‘assault weapons’ ban, and a ban on ‘high capacity magazines’ that will work to buy back those assault weapons that are out there and ensure that those that remain are fully registered,” she said.

The former security adviser also went on to say it’s “unthinkable” and “outrageous” that such reforms have not been passed to date.

“It’s unthinkable to me that even though the vast majority of Americans favor common sense gun restrictions, universal background checks, bans on ‘assault weapons’, and we have a very powerful lobby that has effectively prevented so much of that from being enacted,” she said. “It’s absolutely outrageous. It makes me as angry as anything.”

Biden’s gun plan includes a full-scale prohibition on “assault weapons” in addition to re-classifying the guns and “high-capacity magazines” under the National Firearms Act, which would impose registration and a $200 tax for those already in circulation. The total cost to U.S. firearm owners nationwide was estimated to be roughly $34 billion if the law went into effect, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Rice said it’s “vital” to enact the sweeping gun control.

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Michigan Judge Orders Release of Damning Forensics Report of Dominion Vote Tabulation System, Full Forensics Report

After considerable legal filings intended to block the release of a forensic report of Antrim County Dominion vote tabulation systems, a Michigan judge has lifted a gag order allowing the plaintiff, Allied Security Operations Group, to publicly release the findings.

The results of the forensic audit [full pdf here], while limited only to the vote tabulations in Antrim county, are damning for the Michigan system of elections.

According to the audit:

“We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.

The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud.

Based on our study, we conclude that The Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been certified.

[…] The allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission guidelines is of 1 in 250,000 ballots (.0008%). We observed an error rate of 68.05%. This demonstrated a significant and fatal error in security and election integrity.

[…] It is critical to understand that the Dominion system classifies ballots into two categories, 1) normal ballots and 2) adjudicated ballots. Ballots sent to adjudication can be altered by administrators, and adjudication files can be moved between different Results Tally and Reporting (RTR) terminals with no audit trail of which administrator actually adjudicates (i.e. votes) the ballot batch.

[…] A staggering number of votes required adjudication. This was a 2020 issue not seen in previous election cycles still stored on the server. This is caused by intentional errors in the system. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency or audit trail. Our examination of the server logs indicates that this high error rate was incongruent with patterns from previous years.

The statement attributing these issues to human error is not
consistent with the forensic evaluation, which points more correctly to systemic machine and/or software errors. The systemic errors are intentionally designed to create errors in order to push a high volume of ballots to bulk adjudication.

[…] Research is ongoing. However, based on the preliminary results, we conclude that the errors are so significant that they call into question the integrity and legitimacy of the results in the Antrim County 2020 election to the point that the results are not certifiable.

Because the same machines and software are used in 48 other counties in Michigan, this casts doubt on the integrity of the entire election in the state of Michigan.” (source)

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