Not Fair and Square

There was voter fraud this election. No question about that. And it appears to be massive. Enough to change the outcome of the election? I don’t know, but probably. As an obscure blogger it’s probably safe for me to go out on a limb and say, “Yes, I believe the election was stolen and the president wields power illegitimately.” With that knowledge/belief, what should happen now? We'll get to that question eventually.

First, let’s catalog a bit of the evidence (at this point reported and under investigation but not publicly verified), to establish reasons for this personal belief. That will fill the post for today (it could fill up several, but I’m just touching the surface). Then we’ll take on the “remedy.”

As I said, the catalog of fraud is more than I can easily cover here and still talk about the overall issue. But here are a few lists:

This piece from RedState is from a month before the election, outlining the likely tactics based on holes in the system and current and past practices. Turned out this was prescient. The list includes:

·        The SOS Project (Secretaries of State were put in place, by election or appointment, with George Soros approval, because they are ultimately the vote counters).

·        SEIU shenanigans (ACORN and Project Vote are additional names; there are many).

·        11 million illegal immigrants.

·        Fake ID industry, and inability of acting on information of info mismatches.

·        Voter Registration system flaws.

·        Union GOTV strategies.

·        Early Voting.

This collection, ObamaVoterFraud blog, was put together in the few days following the election. With links for each included in the piece, here are just a few of the many claims:

·        10 counties in Colorado report from 104% to 140%  voter turnout.

·        Philadelphia polling stations that kicked out legal poll observers had 90% voter turnout and 99% of vote going to Obama. (Overall turnout in Philadelphia was a realistic 60%.)

·        70,000 reports of observed fraud turned in by end of Election Day.

·        Voter fraud reported in Wisconsin.

·        Obama won dozens of Cleveland districts with 100% of the vote.

·        Ohio residents show up at polls only to be told they already voted (someone illegally voted in their name).

·        Boston reports 129% voter turnout.

·        Nevada unions are registering illegals and forcing them to vote.

This piece from World Net Daily lists several additional evidences (20% of Ohio registered voters are ineligible, for example) and concentrates on illegal foreign donations as something to follow up on. But the author, Joseph Farah, a former liberal radical himself, reveals some of the philosophy that leads our enemy in power to justify their cheating, which I think is germane:

If anyone has a balanced approach to the realities of political life in America, it’s me. I’ve looked at life from both sides. I know the arguments of the other side and can still spout them before most of today’s practitioners of so-called “progressive” thought can.

I also know that the reigning ethos of this movement represented so ably today by Obama is this: “By any means necessary …” It was first articulated by Jean Paul Sartre in his play, “Dirty Hands.” But it became popularized as a slogan of the revolutionary left by Malcolm X.

What it means, in short, is that the ends justify the means. It means violence is fine in achieving a worthwhile objective. It means lying, stealing, cheating and all those other bourgeoisie “sins” are appropriate means of furthering the cause.

Is there any doubt in your mind today that this is now the reigning ethos of the Democratic Party and its various tentacles and allies?

There is no doubt in my mind.

And that’s why stealing the vote is not only an acceptable practice by these people, it is a moral imperative in their twisted worldview.

This collection tries to summarize, as of a week after Election Day, the litany of evidences. Additional reports I didn’t list above include:

·        Voting machines in several states reported “flipping” ballots to Obama during early voting. While much of this was probably user error, there was video evidence of the repeated problem in Pennsylvania, and machines did indeed “flip” to a default Obama vote.

·        In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 50 precincts showed Romney receiving 2 votes or less, and in 100 precincts, Obama received 99 or more votes for every Romney vote.

·        In Broward County, Florida, Obama received 99% of the vote in many precincts.

·        Wood County, Ohio, has a voting age population of 98, 213 (not all necessarily eligible to register as voters), but on Election Day they somehow had 106, 258 registered voters.

·        In Wisconsin there were reports of people being bussed in from Chicago to vote. The link for this unbelievable (anecdotal Facebook) story is here, and here’s an excerpt:

The Democrats stationed a self described “BIG Chicago pro bono attorney” as one of their two observers at this small polling place. He remained at the polling place from 7:00 a.m. until well after 8:p.m. …..A high priced CHICAGO attorney, sitting in a Sheboygan WISCONSIN polling place, observing wards comprised of 1500 voters? …. WHY???

Why would someone from Chicago be observing in Sheboygan Wisconsin? And WHY at such a small polling place? Finally, isn’t it interesting that this would occur at the VERY polling place in which all of the above described events ALSO occurred? AGAIN WHY WOULD A CHICAGO ATTORNEY BE OBSERVING AN ELECTION POLLING PLACE WITH FEWER THAN 1500 VOTERS IN IT, IN SHEBOYGAN WISCONSIN? Of all the places where there has been suspected voting irregularities, and OUTRIGHT FRAUD throughout the ENTIRE United States, WHY HERE? WHY SHEBOYGAN? WHY THIS SMALL WARD?

This lawyer spent the day running in and out making, and taking calls, which coincidentally then coincided with influxes of groups of individuals by the van and bus loads, coming in to register, AND VOTE, using what appeared to be copied Allient energy bills. These individuals often did not have photo I.D.’s, could not remember their own addresses without looking at the paper, and became easily tripped, confused and annoyed when questioned.

Many of these same individuals, just so happened to be dressed in/wearing CHICAGO BEARS apparel, and whom openly discussed “catching busses back to Chicago” with each other, with poll workers, via their cell phones in the lobby area just outside the polling place, as well as in the parking lot, both before and AFTER registering and voting.

One woman was dressed head to toe in CHICAGO BEARS apparel including perfectly manicured BEARS fake fingernails!

She complained because registering was taking too long and she had to hurry up to catch her bus back to Chicago.

We have photos of these people in vehicles with plates from different states, photos of them leaving the polls, and other irregularities.

Let’s not forget about the military (as the federal government apparently did), with military absentee ballots reportedly down by70%:

The conservative-leaning military vote has decreased drastically since 2010 due to the so-called Military Voter Protection Act that was enacted into law the year before. It has made it so difficult for overseas military personnel to obtain absentee ballots that in Virginia and Ohio there has been a 70% decrease in requests for ballots since 2008. In Virginia, almost 30,000 fewer overseas military voters requested ballots than in 2008. In Ohio, more than 20,000 fewer overseas military voters requested ballots. This is significant considering Obama won in both states by a little over 100,000 votes.

If you follow some of the links within the above lists, you’ll find Project Veritas videos—James O’Keefe, who seems to never fail, even though they should see him coming by now. Also, I left out reports of 140% voter turnout in Florida, as reported early on. It turns out Florida is yet again incapable of voting and counting votes as humanly expected. They had a two-page ballot; instead of reporting how many ballots were reported, they reported how many pages, in other words two pages per vote. When the 140% was cut in half, the turnout was a more believable (but still high) 70%.

Remember 2000, when Democrats claimed Al Gore had been robbed of the presidency—because attempts to cheat in Florida failed to put him over the top in every count, so they just kept counting and changing the count—recounting only counties that had already gone heavily in his favor but had not guaranteed his win as expected? Remember the outrage of the left? Just imagine (actually you can’t imagine, because it doesn’t happen) if conservatives were guilty of so many evidences of fraud? The opposition would simply take to the streets and refuse to accept the legitimacy of the presidency. In fact, even when Bush clearly won, they spent eight years claiming he was a usurper (actually not using that word; they don’t have the vocabulary).

Conservatives are genuinely upset. But I see no riots forthcoming, nor would I favor such a response. Next post the question is, Given massive voter fraud and an illegitimate presidency, what do freedom-loving conservatives do in response?

Doing Enough

We’re very near the end of what has seemed like an endless presidential campaign. While I’m happy to see the campaign end, I have enjoyed the hope for change that the campaign has represented. I believe we have a one-time-only opportunity to stop the transformation from freedom to tyranny. (See Spherical Model for definitions, so you’ll understand I’m not using the terms as an exaggeration.)

I have a political friend on Facebook who has been very dedicated this last couple of years to doing all she could—even though she came around to Romney later than I did. I’ve thought seriously about her question: am I doing enough? I hope it’s enough. It’s more than I’ve done in any previous election cycle.

I’ve been active in a local tea party since well before the 2010 election, and used the odd year to get acquainted with state and local officials, working for legislation we favored in our state. I’ve worked several times as a poll watcher (and I’m scheduled to volunteer again this coming Tuesday). I started this blog, which, while not intended to be political in the sense of candidate support, does deal with the ideology of politics, and I have tried to be clear and honest in my opinions about candidates based on principles.

I have yard signs out. I’ve donated (what equates to approximately a widow’s mite) more than once—more than ever before. And I’ve been praying for our country and trusting in the Lord to give us a chance to recover the blessings of freedom our forefathers fought for.

So, with these few days left, what more should I do?

Here in Texas, there’s a strong sense that conservatives will win big. The Democrat sweep of Harris County in 2008 was partially corrected in 2010, and that is likely to be completed this election. If there were the fair and effective Democrat judge or elected servant in place, they will be swept out with the rest. My advice to them is, if they truly are fair and effective, why are they aligning themselves with a party essentially bankrupt of civilizing principles? But, to those few, I wish them well.

Experts on such things point out that by now everyone who will vote has decided their opinion of the president and the job he’s done. No amount of energy put into his background, his dishonesty—even his horrific failure followed by cover-up surrounding the Benghazi attack this past month—will sway anyone further.

I was watching for the jobs report to come out this morning. It is not surprising; the unemployment rate ticked up slightly, so unemployment is, as it has been all but following last month’s questionable report, above the rate when Obama took office. That coincides with a report that more jobs were created than predicted (171,000 jobs), so some people are saying, “See, the momentum is just getting underway,” apparently unaware that we ought to be seeing double that if we’re actually bouncing back. In reality, the report confirms that things are bad but not continuing to sink even further. If it is correct that the recession ended its downward drop in June 2009, then we should have bounced back up to where we started in about the same amount of time it took to fall—so, generously giving it till June 2010. Yet here we languish in 2012. So it’s clear this administration does not know how to get us out of a recession—or even how to get out of the way so that the bounce back happens on its own.

What people need to know, if they’re undecided (can anyone still be undecided?) is whether there’s an alternative to the doldrums we’re in. And is Romney that alternative? So, it there is something left to be done, it is to reiterate the reasons we can trust Romney to lead us out of the high unemployment, poor business climate, outrageous budget deficits, and crippling regulations.

I spent several posts last winter, during the primary race, focusing on Romney, “Measuring Mitt.” Part I just began mentioning Romney, so parts II-VII are most worth a re-read:

·         Part II: inaccuracies of media and opponents

·         Part III: exemplary character

·         Part IV: flip-flopping and other distortions

·         Part V: definition changes

·         Part VI: Massachusetts health care

·         Part VII: record as predictor of success

There are other days I’ve written about Romney, particularly after the debates. I hope they have been useful. Another good source is radio host Hugh Hewitt, who put together a list of 100 reasons to vote for Romney. (Listen here, read the first third here.)

Photo found here

Another last-minute assurance that you’re making the right choice with Romney is his speech in Wisconsin earlier today. If it’s true that the positive, forward looking, optimistic candidate wins, then he’s letting us know that’s who he is:

We are four days away from a fresh start. Four days away from the first day of a new beginning. My conviction that better days are ahead is not based on promises and hollow rhetoric but solid plans and proven results.

And an unshakeable faith in the American spirit.

If there is anyone worried the last four years are the best we can do, if there is anyone who fears that the American dream is fading away, if there is anyone who wonders whether better jobs and better paychecks are things of the past, I have a clear and unequivocal message: with the right leadership, America will come roaring back.

We are Americans. We can do anything.

The only thing that stands between us and some of the best years we have known is lack of leadership. And that’s why we have elections.

This Tuesday is a moment to look into the future and image what we can do…to put the past four years behind us and start building a new future.

You saw the differences when President Obama and I were side-by-side in our debates. He says it has to be this way. I say it can’t stay this way. He’s offering excuses; I’ve got a plan. He’s hoping we’ll settle. I can’t wait for us to get started.

Americans don’t settle. We build, we aspire, we listen to that voice inside that says, “We can do better.” A better job; a better life for our kids; a bigger, better country.

That better life is out there, waiting for us. Our destiny is in your hands.”

There’s more. It was powerful. I am so very much looking forward to beginning this better future with this much better leader. If we have done enough to turn to God, to rely on Him, and to do our part to show the depth of our dedication, it will be so.

Look Who's Smiling

Last winter I came across a piece about predicting presidential campaign winners based on who smiled the most, or essentially who inspired optimism for a positive future. I wrote comparing the primary candidates in January. The comparison is becoming more obvious as we approach Election Day.

This cover showed up in the Des Moines Register yesterday, illustrating this very point.

 

It is becoming a theme here that I have been praying for clarity, for Americans to see clearly who the President is and who Mitt Romney is, so that their decision will be based on reality and not deceit. I think that is what we are seeing, more and more.

Peggy Noonan has a piece today describing what happened at (and since) the first debate as Americans finally see the real Obama:

People saw for the first time an Obama they may have heard about on radio or in a newspaper but had never seen.

They didn't see some odd version of the president. They saw the president.

And they didn't like what they saw, and that would linger.

What people now see is not some larger-than-life transformational figure representing all the positive hopes for change they can place on a blank slate. What people see now is a petty, narcissistic, self-absorbed, little man, who condescends to disdain America and Americans. At the same time this negatively real Obama was exposed, the real Romney also appeared—reasonable, cool, confident, capable, experienced, and caring.

Contrast is more evident in this election than in any I recall since Reagan/Carter—and maybe surpassing that as well. In the language of the Spherical Model, what we see now in Obama is uncivilized. And what we see in Romney is quintessential civilization.

Obama did an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, slated to his newsstands today, in which he is reported to have had this exchange, described by Douglas Brinkley:

"As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama that he had asked his 6-year-old if there was anything she wanted him to say to the president. ... [S]he said, 'Tell him: You can do it.' Obama grinned," Brinkley wrote, according to Politico. "'You know, kids have good instincts,' Obama offered. 'They look at the other guy and say, 'Well, that's a bullsh**er, I can tell."

There is so much wrong with this. A positive, complimentary moment had just been passed along from a very young child. Obama doesn’t graciously say, “Thank you; the encouragement means so much to me.” He turns it into a vitriolic, anti-Romney moment, putting profanity in the mouths of children. Let me just say that, as a person dedicated to civilization, imperfect in my efforts, I not only never used such a word as a 6-year-old; I have never used that term at any age.

Lena Dunham from "Your First Time" ad

Yesterday I became aware of a new Obama campaign ad, unbelievably profane, called “Your First Time.” It has a 20-something actress describing her first vote, for Obama, to losing one’s virginity.  Ugly. Not funny. And not even original, but a copy of a Putin ad in Russia from last winter.

While Obama is out on the stump in Iowa, but apparently living in his own alternate universe, he says,

We joke about Romnesia, but all of this speaks to something that is really important and that the issue of trust. There is no more serious issue on a presidential campaign than trust. Trust matters. And here's the thing. Iowa, you know me. You know that I say what I mean. And I mean what I say….

And you can take and videotape things I said 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and you would say, man, this is the same guy. Has the same values. Cares about the same people. Doesn't forget where he came from. Knows who he is fighting for.

Except, of course, people take his advice and put together montages of his contrasting statements, because they’re so easy to find. This one is 10 minutes. This one is 13 ½ minutes. This is an 8-minute list Glenn Beck put together.  This one is an entertaining montage of varying “top priorities.” 

This is while more condemning details come out daily about what actually happened in Benghazi. It looks like purposeful neglect before and during the attack, pointing directly to the President, with added cover-up. This man may be seen historically as the absolute worst decision ever made by American voters.

Meanwhile, stories about the real Romney keep leaking out. Deroy Murdock wrote a piece in yesterday’s National Review Online, listing some of the untold stories of Mitt Romney’s private acts of decency (including even some stories I hadn’t come across before). He ends with this explanation:

Why is the real Romney totally unlike the terrifying caricature that has haunted this campaign? Team Obama’s distortions and lies have conspired with Mitt Romney’s modesty to mask his good deeds. Instead, Romney fans should make these secrets famous.

There is a beautiful story told about the behind-the-scenes view during a beyond capacity (10,000, with probably 1,000 turned away) crowd at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado Wednesday, as told in The Ulsterman Report, passed along by a “longtime DC political operative.” You’ll want to read this entire piece, but here are a couple of essential moments, from the beginning, and then from the end:

You know, I’ve gone from just trying to defeat Obama to really trying to help Governor Romney be this country’s next president.  I’m really starting to believe there might be something very special about this man….

[after giving his speech to cheering crowds] The governor returns backstage and he is smiling and shaking hands, taking congratulations from everybody around him.  He’s saying how great it was.  Somebody yells out he’s going to win Colorado and the governor laughs and says he thinks so too.  And then something very interesting happens.  He moves away from the group of people just a bit.  Maybe ten or fifteen feet or so.  Just enough to have a little space to himself.  And enough people notice that the area gets a lot more quiet, and they are trying to watch the governor without looking like they are watching the governor.  They can all kind of tell something is happening right then.  It was described as something very peaceful and powerful that came over that backstage area for a moment.  And the governor, he lowers his head and his eyes shut tight and you could see him take a slow deep breath and then he lets it out and says quietly, but just loud enough for some to hear, “Lord, if this is your will, please help to make me worthy.  Please give me the strength Lord.”  And then his eyes open up, and he’s back to smiling and laughing and shaking hands and being the candidate once again.

I’m 100% convinced Mitt Romney was shaken to his soul right then and there.  I think at that moment it was sinking in he might really be the next American president, and it humbled him right to his core, in every nerve of his body.  And as he was saying that little prayer, you could hear the sound of thunder from all those thundersticks outside. Like this huge low rumble that just surrounded all of them at once.  A quiet little prayer, and the sound of thunder.

The sound of God.

Humility and love—for God, for America, and for individual people. This man is civilized. I think there will come a day when we express thanks to God for preparing him for us, for this time, when such a man is so very needed.

The Lost Majority Part III: Prognostications

If you’re going to delve deep into voting data, you kind of expect that you’ll some hint about what’s going to happen in the future. However, while the data from past elections may be exact, predictions are still dependent on whether or not the data, combined with everything you can know about people’s reasons for their votes, can still be something like meteorology: we look up the forecast, but we’re not surprised when it’s wrong.

Sean Trende’s book, The Lost Majority, isn’t a predictor about the upcoming election; it is a discussion of what has happened, with just a few basic themes:

·        There’s no such thing as a permanent majority—and Obama’s election was certainly not an indicator of a permanent progressive majority.

·        Emerging majorities described by overexcited commentators on both sides are wrong; neither party is headed toward extinction or marginalization.

·        The very idea of cyclical long-term direction changes is a wrong reading of history, which shows alternating victories by either party as more normal than exceptional.

So, his point that 2008 did not indicate a mandate for transformation to “progressive,” rather than “constitutional” government , is encouraging—and was borne out by the outcry against such an assumption in 2010. But the book was written too early (by early 2011, well before a GOP candidate was known) to say anything certain about November 2012.

But there are some pieces of information that can be useful. Much of today we’ll be looking at the limits of Obama’s narrow but deep coalition.

Obama’s coalition consists of:

·         Minorities: blacks, Hispanics, Asians

·         Labor unions

·         Youth (18-29-year-old voters)

·         Welfare recipients

That wasn’t enough to elect him in 2008. That year he received support from many disgruntled Republicans and independents who liked the idea of voting for a black and having racism forever off the table as an issue, many of whom were unhappy with the length of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the suddenly collapsing housing, automobile, and banking industries. They were willing to trust that someone who offered “hope” and “change” meant something remotely close to what they hoped would change.

What we can surmise from current polling data, if we can’t yet guess outcomes, is that essentially no one who voted for McCain in 2008 will vote for Obama in 2012. The question is simply, will Obama maintain enough support from his base to be reelected? He received (conflicting reports of) 90-97% of the black vote in 2008. If he loses 8% of that vote, either from changing their vote to the opponent or staying away (and they had turned out in unprecedented numbers in 2008), that could make a critical difference.

He also had the youth vote that lacks enthusiasm this time. I don’t know the numbers, but the insupportably high unemployment rate for young people, including college graduates returning home to live with parents, is going to have a dampening effect.

Unions still support Obama, but the actual workers, what you might refer to as white non-college educated, didn’t go strongly for Obama even in the primary, and became to him “bitter clingers,” were written off before election, so he’s not getting them back after four years of sustained high unemployment. He still retains a fairly strong following among whites with post-graduate degrees (the elites who assume they will be part of the ruling class), but support for him has collapsed among college-educated whites.

Stanley Kurtz has been talking about Obama’s attacks on this group in a recent book (Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities), and articles about the attempts to transfer wealth from suburbs to urban areas, which Obama believe is the more moral, authentic place to live. In other words, if you’re a middle-class family person who lives in a house, Obama has written you off.

Hispanics are an interesting demographic for prognosticators. There’s an assumption that, as the Hispanic population grows, support for Democrats grows with it. And while it’s true that Hispanics do lean Democrat, as they integrate into American culture and move into the middle class, they become more conservative. Here is Trende’s summary:

But what of Latinos? If they vote like African Americans, it seems that Republicans would be in very deep demographic trouble. However, if they vote like Anglos, it suggests that as more and more Latinos become wealthier and, presumably, more conservative, they will also become more Republican (see figure 8.7).

            As it turns out, the Latino vote looks a lot more like the non-Hispanic white vote than the African American vote. Latino voters in each group are roughly 10 points more Democratic than white voters, while Latino conservatives are about 50 points more Republican than conservative African Americans. The critical distinction is that there are more Latino liberals than there are white liberals and fewer conservatives (pp. 146-147).

So the question is still out there about the effect of a growing Hispanic population. But here in Texas, on the ground, in Tea Party meetings and political conventions, Hispanics have a very strong and very welcome presence. I know this is anecdotal evidence only, but I still believe it’s just a matter of speaking the message of lower taxes, greater opportunity, and freedom, supported by strong religion and personal responsibility. The message resonates.

Many Hispanics vote Democrat for the same reason as many other Democrats: their parents did, their friends do. They haven’t even thought through ideological reasons; they just do what is expected. If they can be led to think it through, they are very likely to recognize how much the conservative message resonates with their personal values of hard work, strong families, and a desire to improve life for themselves and the next generation.

Obama has made some assumptions about keeping retirees, but he’s been losing that argument in Florida, where retired whites in overwhelming numbers are abandoning the president who “borrowed” $700 Billion from Medicare to fund an extremely unpopular government medical takeover.

He has claimed the women’s vote, and tried to frame that as a GOP war on women, but since there’s no such war, sometimes the arguments just look silly (remember Stephanopoulos’s debate question out of the blue on limiting birth control?) This question comes down to women looking completely incapable of paying for basic care that is available and affordable, up against major religions standing strong for their right not to be forced to fund behaviors against their religious tenants. The only way Obama keeps the female vote is by assuming women are totally reliant on government, and are non-religious—and against living in suburban homes with their families. I wouldn’t count on that. He will probably keep single, post-graduate-educated women and poor non-taxpaying single-mothers.

So he has written off whites, except for a portion of elites and the non-taxpaying largesse recipients. His enthusiastic youth vote (much of which was combined with temporary increase in minority voters) has been deflated. His minority support, while still strong, is less enthusiastic and less monolithic.

As Trende says, “There is nothing inherently wrong with a narrow, deep coalition….  But the real threat with a narrow, deep coalition is that there is not much room for error. The party cannot afford for another portion of the coalition to become dissatisfied with the direction it is taking” (p. 105).

In order to win, he must win all major urban areas—with enough leeway to overcome opposing votes in the non-urban areas in many states. There’s still reason for concern, but it doesn’t look likely. And we have the advantage of a very capable, very appealing alternative.