Posse Incitatus

A Day of Thanks and Gratitude

Thanksgiving this year is somewhat dysfunctional, given the pandemic and restrictions placed upon individual households regarding how many people can gather together for a meal.

Millions of people are hurting -- financially, emotionally, perhaps physically if they've battled or are currently fighting off COVID-19. And millions are in psychological distress because the presidential election didn't go the way they wanted. The anxiety or depression can be exacerbated this time of year, when the days are short and often cloudy, and darkness comes early at the end of each day.

At times like this, it's more important than ever to maintain an attitude of gratitude. If you're in good health, and your loved ones are too, you get enough to eat every day, and you have a roof over your head, you're already deeply blessed. The fact is, no matter how cynical and angry we get about crooked, lying politicians, corruption and ineptitude inside the Beltway, we still live in the greatest country in the world. 

Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world would give their eye teeth to live the lives many of us enjoy. I've always said that a big part of having faith in God is having humility: Admitting that we don't have all the answers, asking for guidance, protection, mercy and comfort. Worshiping because we want to, not out of a sense of obligation.

The same can be said for being grateful for our blessings. If we are humble enough to appreciate all we have, and make that our focus, we are much less likely to long for what we don't have, whether it's a higher paying job, a bigger home, a nicer car or a fatter 401k account. If we have content hearts, we'll behave better toward our family members, neighbors, friends and coworkers. 

Even during difficult times, the abundant blessing we have and the realistic hope of better days ahead can give us a joy and peace that's hard to explain. Try it, you'll like it, as that old commercial used to say.

The Posse wishes you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving, and encourages everyone to maintain a grateful heart. You'll be glad you did.

Hope is Fading for the Trumpster

Michigan's Board of State Canvassers today certified the state's election results. This comes just days after Georgia certified its votes, joining approximately 15 states that have completed the process by today.

Additionally, various lawsuits brought by President Donald Trump's legal team in several states seem to be getting slapped down left and right by judges -- not all of them known to be liberals.

On Sunday, Trump's legal team separated itself from famed attorney Sidney Powell, whose frequent tweets, news conferences and TV/radio interviews have made her quite ubiquitous of late. Apparently the Trumpster's legal beagles don't want to see the kraken -- or don't believe there is a kraken.... or something like that.

I am pessimistic that A) Trump's barristers really do have sufficient evidence of fraud to overturn what are believed to be the results of the presidential election; and  B) Even if they did, that there's enough time and there are judges willing to allow the evidentiary hearing process to play itself out.

There may well have been some deliberate computer shenanigans that miscounted votes, and perhaps we'll never know. There obviously are myriad problems with mail-in ballots: A larger, longer chain of custody poses problems, as do a lack of transparency, a dragged out process, outdated voter rolls, ballot harvesting, loosey-goosey standards on signatures, postmarks and deadlines, judges that move the goalposts in a random, arbitrary fashion. Indeed, the sloppiness, carelessness and incompetence may be as big a problem as the fraud.

One has to wonder: What if the news about Joe and Hunter Biden's sleazy dealings with China, Russia and Ukraine had been known several weeks before the election, AND the media had covered them with the same zealousness as they did the Russian collusion hoax. How many millions of those who voted by mail for Biden 3-6 weeks prior to Nov. 3 would have still voted for him?

And what if Pfizer and BioNTech had announced their vaccine breakthroughs just before Election Day rather than just after? Chances are, Trump would have cruised to re-election.

The great news is that, despite clueless predictions such as that of the Cook Report that Democrats would gain 10-15 seats in the U.S. House, the Republicans picked up at least 10 seats (and have an excellent chance to snag several more). Republicans are favored to win at least one, and quite possibly both, of the U.S. Senate seats in Georgia's Jan. 5 runoff. The GOP also fared well at the state level across the nation.

Another hopeful sign that voters have not bought into left-wing extremism is California's three ballot initiatives that didn't go the way the left wanted them to: The Golden State's voters rejected proposals on rent control, affirmative action, and a union-endorsed attempt to force "gig" companies to pay benefits and a minimum wage to their contractors. In the case of Lyft and Uber, for example, this would have destroyed their business model and the flexibility they offer their drivers. Many thousands of jobs would have been lost, and consumers' prices to catch a ride would have spiraled.

So there is still some common sense out there. But dangers do lurk. Requests for absentee ballots are up dramatically in Georgia prior to the Jan. 5 runoff election. Progressives are showering the Peach State's Democrat candidates with multi-millions of dollars, and even encouraging libs to move there and register to vote in an effort to swing the elections in Democrats' favor. (The latter is actually a felony.) Georgia's Republican Legislature must lay down the law asap -- before it's too late. Monitoring of the election, and maybe even a thorough audit conducted by an outside organization such as a respected accounting firm-- should be implemented. 

Maybe one benefit from this year's election fiasco (Memo to Democrats and their media stooges: It was secure and full of integrity like Portland is a model of peaceful protests) will be to force Republican lawmakers at both the state and federal level to crack down on the outrageously loose and lax laws, and the willingness to condone, if not actually advocate, voter fraud.

Make no mistake: The Democrats have been avid participants in voter fraud for many decades, going back to Tammany Hall and earlier. Perhaps voters are waking up to this. We can only hope, for the sake of our republic, our liberties, and the future of the world.

Show Us the Kraken!

We are now more than two weeks past Election Day. The final votes for Donald Trump and Joe Biden have not been certified, so Biden is not officially the president-elect, even though the media has declared that he is.

As I type, a ballot recount is wrapping up in Georgia, and a partial recount is planned in Wisconsin. Trump's legal team made arguments before several courts today, including what observers said was a highly convincing case presented by Rudy Giuliani. (Keep in mind, in addition to being a highly effective mayor of New York, Giuliani was a stellar federal prosecutor who broke up the Italian mafia in New York during the 1980s. He's damned good, and doggedly persistent.)

Some of the arguments, such as those presented by Giuliani, center around paper ballots -- which ones are qualified, which are disqualified, what the standards are, what Pennsylvania's law says, and how its Secretary of State allegedly violated that law by extending ballot deadlines.

But famed attorneys Lin Wood (he of Nick Sandmann fame) and Sidney Powell insist they have ample evidence about corrupt vote counting software and machines -- in particular Dominion Software and Smartmatic voting machines. Powell claims to have “staggering” statistical evidence and testimony to show Dominion voting machines altered ballots, and this deception harkens back to similar shenanigans in Venezuela, Cuba, and China.

“I’m going to release the Kraken," Powell recently stated, introducing millions of Americans to a new word that means a hideous sea monster. A horrible aquatic monster might be an apt metaphor for the abusive and corrupt deep state that continues to bedevil the American people.

In addition to the voting machines and mysterious connections to servers in Spain and Frankfort, Germany (on top of ties to Latin American totalitarian hellholes), there are hundreds of pages of sworn affidavits pertaining to voting irregularities and brazen fraudulent activity in several states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.

Developments have been so fast and furious, my head is spinning. A part of me wants to say, "Don't join the tin foil hat conspiracy crowd; you KNOW this is over!" But another part of me -- the one that witnessed deceitful behavior by the deep state, four years of hateful lies directed at Donald Trump 24/7, and a compliant media uncritically going along with it -- makes me think the President's legal team probably has many legitimate grievances.

Just because the New York Times, other media and various governors and secretaries of state repeatedly assure us this election was secure and there is no evidence of fraud, does not mean it's true. Matter of fact, their certainty and arrogance seems to indicate quite the opposite. 

Here's a great tweet by Sean Davis of the Federalist that pretty much sums it up:

Bush stole the election. Bush did 9/11. Bush lied about WMD. Diebold stole the election for Bush. Trump is a Russian agent. Kavanaugh is a rapist. Violent riots are peaceful. All Republicans are Nazis. Trump: I think Democrats cheated. Media: THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED. Get bent.

If somehow the results are overturned, the rioting and rage will be so off the charts, I fear for the future of our nation. But maybe that's what we really need, so the left can show its true colors in such an overwhelming, horrendous fashion, the media won't be able to cover it up by ignoring what's happening or spouting stupid B.S. like "peaceful protests." Thick-headed, naive and apathetic people may FINALLY get the message about the pervasive evil that exists across the nation.

Sometimes necessary change is a painful, jarring thing. That might be just what the doctor ordered.

Stewing in the Aftermath

I think it's safe to say that had it not been for Coronavirus and COVID-19, President Trump would have been easily re-elected. He's kept us out of a war; the economy was roaring; unemployment was at record low levels for blacks and Hispanics, and their wages were steadily rising; his administration brokered important peace deals in the Middle East; he pushed back against China, withdrew from climate scam deals, pulled out of the horrendous Iran nuclear deal, and did more for black people than any recent Democrat president.

Joe Biden, in his heart of hearts, must be secretly thinking, "THANK YOU, CHINA!" And it goes without saying, if Biden had been president in early 2020, we would have probably over 1 million COVID-19 deaths, not 250,000. Remember, Sleepy Joe and his fellow Democrats opposed banning flights from China. But don't expect the media jackals to acknowledge this.

A part of me wants to fulminate (see the headline -- written to be provocative!), but a bigger part of me is counting my blessings, avoiding the TV news, and finding enjoyable ways to spend my time that do not involve politics. I'm reading a good book; sporadically writing a book; sorting through and jettisoning old photos, papers and news clippings; and cleaning out my closets to donate clothing to Goodwill. Oh, and I've raked lots of leaves these past few days.

But as promised, I do have some followup thoughts on the presidential election. First of all, I think the president's chances of overturning the tentative results are slim. The margins in Pennsylvania and Michigan are too large to overcome, and both states have rigid Democrat infrastructure in place to prevent the transparency and forensic evidence needed as the Electoral College delegations prepare to cast their votes. Democrat clerks, governors, secretaries of state and attorneys general are going to throw up as many roadblocks as possible to Trump's legal team.

Outdated voter rolls featuring names of dead people, former residents who moved out of state or prison inmates? No audits done in 10-15 years? Tough luck. Try to make them an issue. The vermin media and Democrats will scream "VOTER SUPPRESSION!"

It is beyond obvious that many of the major cities in the swing states (Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee, for instance) have bad reputations as bastions of voter fraud. In Detroit, for instance, a large majority of ballots cast during the Democrat primary of August 2020 were incorrectly counted or not counted at all. City Clerk Janice Winfrey is either incompetent, crooked, or both. There are also reports of postal workers submitting sworn affidavits that they were directed by supervisors to postmark late arriving ballots as having arrived several days earlier.

One of the biggest conspiracy theories floating around the Internet is that the deep state has installed a supercomputer called "Hammer," which through its "Scorecard" program used algorithms to subtly change votes in crucial battleground states. Too, there are connections between wealthy Democrats and companies -- e.g., Dominion Voting Systems -- that developed the software used in voting machines.

Without being employed in cyber security or in a high level IT position for the federal government, and lacking the technical expertise, I am in no position to ascertain the accuracy of these claims. But one thing's for sure: Don't simply buy the "FALSE" labels slapped on by left-wing "fact checkers" like Snopes.com. So-called fact checkers are often as full of it as pollsters and the media.

We have definitely seen some anomalies in the vote tallies. In four states, tens of thousands of ballots reportedly had just one circle filled in: the one for Joe Biden as president. Everything else was left blank. The totals: Pennsylvania: 98,000 ballots; Georgia: 85,000; Wisconsin: 62,000; Arizona: 42,000.

It's also a fact that despite Biden winning the popular vote by 5 million (a number skewed by uber-liberal California), the Republicans are likely to have picked up 10 or more U.S. House seats when the counting is finished and have an excellent chance of retaining control of the Senate. They've also swung the New Hampshire Legislature from Democrat to Republican, expanded GOP majorities in the Florida and North Carolina legislatures, and won at least two gubernatorial races.

We must keep in mind that it is plausible millions of independents, Democrats and even a few Republicans, could have voted for some Republican candidates down ballot but voted against Trump. Not so much because they hated his policies, but because their animus and contempt for the man blots out everything else. As Trump himself would say, "Sad."

Every state in the nation has a Board of Canvassers which goes back and checks disputed ballots. Aside from that, Georgia's Secretary of State has ordered a statewide recount, and numerous court challenges mounted by Trump's legal team are ongoing. So there will be plenty of examples of voter fraud and poll worker sloppiness coming up, albeit it's doubtful any of them will be massive enough to swing a state over to Trump.

The Trump team's best prospect for winning a huge battle in the overall war is Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes). That's because there's a reasonable chance the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case pertaining to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which stipulates that state legislatures are to administrate elections, including setting deadlines for mail-in ballots.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court arbitrarily extended the deadline for mail-in ballots by three days as long as they were postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. SCOTUS has already passed on overruling the Pennsylvania court, thanks to the wolf-in-sheep's clothing Chief Justice John Roberts. But the high court may take up the case if Pennsylvania's militant Democrat leaders continue to arrogantly defy transparency.

The shit show continues. I am furious that we have allowed voting to be dumbed down and dragged out over 6-8 weeks. It is appalling that Democrats treat their voters like four-year-olds, coddling them endlessly. An election day with deadlines and in-person voting is like the rule of law or private property rights. Without it, you have chaos and ample opportunity for fraud.

Of course, there should be exceptions for military veterans, people in poor health, and vast areas like Alaska where in-person voting is not feasible. But the vast majority of Americans ought to show up and vote in person. If this means lines would be helplessly long, maybe a few days could be added to spread out the crowds. There's no reason the election couldn't be confined to 3-4 days.

Regrettably, the current circus is the equivalent of a banana republic. Americans had better insist that this charade be cleaned up before the 2022 elections, or we'll lose our republic before we know what hit us.

Picking Up the Pieces

Readers of the Posse may wonder why neither K.N. McBride nor I have posted anything about the results of Tuesday's elections.

I cannot speak for my esteemed co-blogger, but I will say that I have been so burned out by politics, and so disheartened by the Biden/Harris victory, that I haven't felt like writing any comments.

I'm going to make a few brief observations, then hold off for several days before addressing the presidential election and U.S. Senate in more detail. Part of the reason for this is I'm trying to let the dust settle a bit. Rumors and unsubstantiated information are swirling wildly across social media and the Internet. I need to dig into this a bit to have a better idea what's really going on with regard to allegations of fraud, plans for recounts or audits, and chilling threats from the left about enemies lists and truth & reconciliation commissions.

I believe that some fraud did occur, but I also think it is highly unlikely we'll ever get to the bottom of it. Over the past 8 years or so, we have seen repeated abuses of power and criminal activities perpetrated by President Obama (e.g., IRS targeting of political enemies and the FBI's spying on reporters Sharyl Attkisson and James Rosen); by Hillary Clinton (the Clinton Foundation money laundering, perjury, plus violations of the Espionage Act); James Comey and James Clapper repeatedly lying under oath... The list goes on.

Yet no one has been held accountable, nor have most of the FBI hacks who tried to undermine President Trump with a flurry of lies, flimsy evidence and a bogus investigation that led to the impeachment sham. Just as there was no accountability in these many cases, so will there be no getting to the bottom of election irregularities in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

On the positive side, the Republicans picked up five or six House seats, and may still pick up 4-5 more. They have a reasonable chance of retaining Senate control. Currently they hold 48 seats; their incumbent candidate in Alaska is way ahead (think 60-30 percent), and their North Carolina incumbent is a couple percentage points ahead of his opponent. If they win both seats (highly likely), they'll be up to 50, and may still pick up two more seats when Georgia's two Senate races go to a Jan. 5 runoff. Incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler has an excellent chance of staying in office, but incumbent David Perdue faces a stiff challenge from progressive media darling Jon Ossof. Most likely, the GOP will end up with a 51-49 advantage, but 52-48 is possible.

Besides the House and Senate silver linings, it has become clear that a much large percentage of Hispanics and blacks voted for Trump than in 2016. Even Native Americans and Muslims gave Trump much better support than they did four years ago. Indeed, Trump did better with minorities than any GOP presidential candidate in 60 years. Preliminary numbers show about 26 percent of his votes came from non-white voters. He has successfully performed a makeover of the GOP. Once the snobbish, blue blood country club party, it is now clearly on the side of the working class, middle class and minorities who are fed up with Democrats' empty promises and poor performances.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, once the lunch bucket / hardhat party of "Joe Sixpack,"  have morphed into the party of secular progressives, "woke" lunatics, coastal elites and billionaire oligarchs. There's no doubt in my mind many people voted for Biden/Harris not because they love them or the Democrats' radical platform, but mainly because they loathe Donald Trump.

The media already had become thoroughly discredited in recent years; this election also demonstrated that pollsters are eqully full of it. I have even observed some commentary from honest liberals who acknowledge that the media narrative of Trump supporters as racist hillbillies and neanderthals ("deplorables" in the words of HildaBeast), were grossly inaccurate. A good example is this column by Josh Hammer of Newsweek.

If the Democrats somehow manage to scratch and claw their way to a 50-50 tie in the Senate, that makes V.P. Harris the tiebreaker. It also opens the door to evisceration of the Constitution and permanent one-party rule. The Supreme Court would be stacked with leftist justices; D.C. and Puerto Rico would become states (four more Democrat senators guaranteed); the immigration floodgates would be opened up; generous healthcare and welfare benefits would be extended to tens of millions of illegal aliens despite the fact we cannot even take care of our own as it is (including homeless Veterans). More than 100 million conservative Americans will be put out to pasture forever more.

But I'm not going to drive myself crazy worrying about this doomsday scenario. I'm going to keep praying about it, and continue trying to do productive things with my time and my life.

There's a heck of a lot more to say about this election, and I will definitely have more commentary soon. But for right now, I've got to step back and take a breather. This whole year has been trying in so many ways. I have resolved not to get angry, depressed or stressed. That in itself will take some self-discipline and focus, but it is extremely crucial.

At Long Last...

My wife and I voted at a polling place just a quarter mile from our home at about 7:30 a.m. today.  We arrived about 6:50 a.m., and the line outside was about 50 feet long. Just 5 minutes later, it was 250 feet long. I must give credit to the poll workers, who were professional and well-organized. The whole experience was not bad at all.

I'll bet I can speak for millions of Americans when I say I'm glad Election Day is finally here. After many months of speculation, trash talking, ubiquitous polls, endless TV talking heads, op/eds and Twitter wars, it's show time.

Actually, the early and absentee voting has been going on for many weeks, but today is when things start coming to a head, with in-person voting from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. at thousands of poll locations across the nation. Ironically, some states have been receiving mail-in ballots for weeks, but won't begin tabulating them until today or tomorrow. In some cases, in-person votes will end up being tabulated prior to the mail-in ballots.

The number of people voting early and/or by mail this year greatly exceeds anything we've seen in the past. So viewers waiting with baited breath to check out tonight's cable news political reports ought to remember that adage about taking things with a grain of salt. In some states, it might look like Trump has a big lead, but after mail-in ballots are counted, the margin could shrink or even flip toward Biden.

Already, there are hundreds of lawsuits pending regarding ballots and ballot rules in many states. The disputes include everything from deadlines to signatures to postmarks, plus absentee rule changes, ballot harvesting... This has the potential to turn into a major shit-show that plays out over six or eight ugly weeks, if not longer. One of the biggest dangers is that the whole thing might remain unresolved by mid-December, when the federal Electors are supposed to cast their ballots. This could throw the election into the U.S. House of Representatives.

One thing I dearly hope is that, as I expect will be the case, following a second straight embarrassing performance during a presidential election, dozens of pollsters will be thoroughly humiliated and discredited. And that many of them will elect to get out of the polling business and find something else to do for a living.

The mainstream media has already marginalized itself, and their woke obsessions will hammer the bottom line for many news organizations (Get woke, go broke). We can only hope that the same happens to many of these partisan pollsters, whose intent to discourage and demoralize conservatives is as brazen as what so-called "journalists" have engaged in for many years.

Meantime, brace yourselves, as the left-wing anarchists are licking their chops at the opportunity to burn down our cities and do physical harm to Trump supporters. Who knows, maybe they'll fan out from the downtown areas and into the neighborhoods, being the brownshirts they are.

I've already availed myself of the Second Amendment more than once. Now, to get a generator and have it wired into the house, as I continue to believe our power grid is highly vulnerable to hacking and sabotage. It's far better to be over-prepared than unprepared.

May you live in interesting times, indeed.