From the American Heritage dictionatry, the word “Distillation”
With that definition in mind: this article in the Atlantic is as pure a distillation of Berg’s Seventh Law as rhetorical chemistry will allow.
So then you will ignore the Canadians:
For months, young people on university campuses across Canada have gathered to call and text American voters in the hopes of convincing them to support Sanders as the 2020 Democratic nominee.
“I see this as really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not just in American politics, but for left-wing politics around the world,” said Vancouver student Quentin Rowe-Codner.
The 22-year-old Sanders supporter did some research and discovered foreigners are allowed to volunteer for any campaign.
“I decided to start making calls and texts and I found that to be good and rewarding,” said Rowe-Codner. “But I started a little bit isolated just doing it on my own.”
If the left didn’t have selective indignation, they’d have no…
…well, no. They’d just have undiscriminating blanket indignation.
Hey, Mitch – why are Democrats and Big Left pushing to scrap the Electoral College and make the Senate a popularly-elected body?
Oh, why do you think?
SCENE: Mitch BERG is out mowing his leaves – using the lawn mower to chop and bag them. Taking a (what else?) left to right pass across his lawn, he is unaware of Avery LIBRELLE riding up the sidewalk behind him on reclining bike.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Er…hey, Avery.
LIBRELLE: You say that there’s rampant voting fraud!
BERG: I do indeed.
LIBRELLE: You mostly point to voting registration fraud! That doesn’t mean they actually vote.
BERG: So people manufacture thousands of bogus registrations just for the fun of it?
LIBRELLE: You can’t prove that’s not why they do it!
BERG: Huh. OK. Well, then, it appears some of them go on to manufacture the actual votes.
LIBRELLE: But if you suppress illegal ballots, you will inevitably suppress legal ones.
BERG: That makes no sense.
LIBRELLE: “Sense” is a social construct!
(Before BERG can reply, LIBRELLE motors on).
And SCENE
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/10/31/minneapolis-man-charged-with-falsifying-13-absentee-ballots-ahead-of-2018-election
A friend of the blog sent me this; it’s a map showing the most-common birth country for immigrants, by state, excluding Mexico.
And with most states, you see either what would appear to be the effects of random distribution according to economic forces (the fairly even spreading of Indians, driven heavily by immigration of engineers, academics and other technicians), proximity (Philipinos in the West, Canadians in the North, Cubans in Florida), one that stumps me (Germans in New Mexico?)…
…and Somalis in Minnesota.
Why, it’s almost as if a political movement decided to import an entire class of voters and concentrate them in a swing-y state, and indoctrinate them into a multi-generational voting bloc or something.
.
A friend of the blog writes:
I worked briefly in a nursing home. Election judges would come around with absentee ballots and nursing home residents had the opportunity to vote. That was good, I thought. Then, I saw children “helping” their parents vote. Parents that couldn’t tell you where they are, what they had for breakfast, etc. They had no idea they were voting. Even if those children tried to vote the way they thought their parents would want, they were only guessing. Is that right?
So, I thought of that experience when I read this tweet.
There are so many responses that imply the Texas Senator does not want people to vote. To me, it sounds like he doesn’t want activists driving people to vote and influencing their vote. It sounds like you can still ask your friend, neighbor, son, brother to drive you. And if you are cognizant enough to ask someone to get you to the polls, then you probably are not going to allow someone else to make the choice for you. Seems fair enough, given the gravity of the right to vote.
Jamming uninformed, or push-informed, people to the polls is a feature, not a bug, for at least one major political party.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Bernie Sanders wants to let felons vote while in prison.
The point of voting is to choose wise leaders to make sensible laws. The point of restrictions on voting is to ensure the people doing the choosing are, themselves, wise people. Children, the mentally infirm, and felons are, by definition, not wise people. Felons have already demonstrated they’re not willing to follow sensible laws so they no longer get to participate in choosing who makes the laws. This isn’t a new concept – it’s been the law for thousands of years for the simple reason that it works.
Watering down wise peoples’ votes by extending the franchise to unwise people, can only result in decisions that are less wise. And that’s how we get Democrats in office: dumb voters making bad decisions. This can’t end well.
It’s not intended to.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
When Richard Nixon’s re-election team wanted to know what the opposition was up to, and needed some dirt, they broke into a psychiatrist office in the Watergate apartment complex. The subsequent investigation brought down the president and tainted the Republican party for decades
When Hillary Clinton’s election campaign wanted to know what Trump was up to and needed some dirt, they laundered some money through their Law Firm to pay for a phony dossier, which they shopped to friendly agents in the FBI who used it to get a warrant to wiretap the candidate. The wiretap transcripts were given to the White House, where Susan Rice unmasked the participants in campaign discussions. Everyone who believes that she scrupulously kept that information away from Hillary’s campaign, raise your hands.
Everyone involved knew they were using the national security cover story as a fig leaf to hide their attempt tp play dirty pool in the election. When they got caught, they had no choice but to continue running with it, and got some cover from Never Trumpers to get a special investigator appointed. But it was always a lie, from the very beginning, And everybody knew it except the voting public.
They shouldn’t get away with it.Joe Doakes
Modern “progressive” politics is always about telling the low-information emotion-driven voter whatever it takes to give you power.
House Democrats can’t bring themselves to oppose illegal immigrant voting, even in the most meaningless way possible:
Nearly every House Democrat on Friday opposed a measure condemning voting in U.S. elections by illegal immigrants, as part of a sweeping election reform bill.
Oh nooo, Fox News
The GOP-backed measure would have added language to the “H.R. 1” election proposal stating that “allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.”
Federal law already prohibits non-citizens from voting in elections for federal office. But the GOP motion referenced how San Francisco is allowing non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to register to vote in school board elections.
Bear in mind – it’s the same language that passed without controversy six months ago.
The entire Democrat conference seems to think the entire nation suffers from Pauline Kael syndrome.
A friend of the blog writes:
I don’t necessarily think it should be easier to vote. I think people should respect their right and make informed decisions. But, I do think it would be beneficial if more people did take their right seriously and voted.
With that, I laugh every time someone declares that voting day as a holiday will make it easier for people to vote. Easier for whom? Most poor people working for minimum wage in service industries will still be working. Healthcare workers will still be working. The list could go on.
Let’s look at the announcement by the city of Sandusky, Ohio, who will be making voting day a holiday. They’re swapping out Columbus Day. (I don’t think that I have ever had Columbus Day off let alone holiday pay for working it, so is this going to be helpful for people?) Some decision makers were concerned that they were losing a 3 day holiday, but we’re swayed because this would be for the greater good. Of note, per this article, this would only affect 250 residents out of 26,000. The city manager admits it is “a small gesture, but an important one.”
Not sure if it is even a gesture of any import. How many of these 250 were already voting?
It might be a cheap shot to say “Progressives benefit by driving lots of ill-informed people to the polls”.
It really might.
I’m not sure “cheap shot” and “accurate” are mutually exclusive.
Arthur Chrenkoff on election reform, Australian style.
Tired of non-citizens enrolling (and voting Democrat (allegedly))? Or counties where more people end up enrolled (and voting) than are actually eligible to vote? Easy – to enrol to vote in Australia you need to present a driver’s licence or a passport or have someone who is already enrolled confirm your identity. This last option potentially opens the door to mischief, since you could make a chain of fraudulent enrolments based on the first, genuine link, but even with that proviso, the Australian system seems to me a lot tighter than the American seemingly free-for-all.
It could hardly be worse.
Before an election, every person on the electoral roll is mailed a little card by the electoral commission with the voter’s details and a unique barcode. To be able to receive a ballot at the polling station you need to either present the card to be scanned or if you have forgotten to bring it with you you need to show a valid ID for your name to be marked on the voters’ list. Failing either, you can query your absence on the electoral roll and lodge a provisional vote, whose validity will be carefully assessed as part of the overall count, but it is a relatively rare occurrence. To an Australian, an argument that requiring an ID to vote is tantamount to “voter suppression” seems pretty ridiculous. Virtually everyone has got some sort of an ID; the tiny remainder can be accommodated separately.
It seems to make sense.
The DFL will fight it to the death.
Florida candidate tweets out an explicit solicitation to election fraud:
Tweet was removed. Of course.
When Dems talk about “vote suppression?” They’re projecting. Every f*****g time.
A friend of the blog writes:
This story, which will likely be explained away as a harmless anomaly, hints at what is likely a much larger issue.
A dozen invalid ballots? I would like to know if the full dozen were all witnessed by the same ineligible person or if its a dozen ineligible persons. I would also like to know the reason for their ineligibility (i.e. out of state resident, suspended civil rights, or simply failure to register to vote). Given that CD1,CD2 & CD8 are all in play for possible Republican takeover and CD5 has media darling Omar who, like Ocasio-Cortez, must be supported at any cost to keep the millennial voters interested enough to vote, it is not unlikely that the ineligible witness is an out of state operative associated with the DNC or one of the Soros based groups. I would also like to know what subgroups those ineligible ballots came from (black, Asian, Hispanic, etc). If Omar loses out to Keliher then she’s out of office/politics for at least a couple years
Greater Minnesota seems to be getting redder, so the DFL needs its bulwark in the metro to be as strong as possible.
No matter how many shenanigans they need to pull.
You will practice your so-called “freedom” the way your betters decree you shall, peasant:
“Sure – indulge in your so-called freedom of speech. The authorities will have you on record”.
Hennepin County doesn’t recognize the authority of the First Amendment, much less the ‘Supreme Court”.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The State of Minnesota will be printing election ballots soon. The more candidates, the more voter confusion, the greater the risk the wrong person will be elected by mistake. The State has a legitimate interest in keeping elections fair and transparent. One method would be to limit the number of candidates. We already do that tto some extent, by requiring a certain number of signatures to get on the ballot, but there still are too many candidates who qualify. It’s reasonable to restrict the number of candidates for voter convenience. But not in a random or discriminatory manner; instead, the restriction should apply to candidates that have the fewest number of likely voters and therefore the least likelihood of being elected. Eliminating them from the ballot won’t affect the outcome of the election – they weren’t going to get elected anyway.
As it happens, those sure-loser candidates mostly are Republicans, who haven’t won elective office in the Twin Cities for decades. Republican candidates serve mainly to confuse and mislead voters which threatens the integrity of the elections. Henceforth, Republican candidates are banned in Minnesota.
It’s a restriction that is reasonably related to a legitimate government interest and therefore passes the “rational basis” standard of review for infringements on liberties protected by the Constitution. It’s every bit as Constitutional as this law:Joe Doakes
And if the DFL manages to pass it, the Supreme Court of Minnesota won’t dream of challenging it.
Joe Doakes from Como Parks emails:
Liberal: There is absolutely no voter fraud; therefore, we do not need an investigation or voter ID law and you’re a hateful racissss for saying so.
Conservative: Dozens of non-citizens voted illegally in Ohio. There were more votes than voters in Detroit.
Liberal: There is voter fraud; but we do not need an investigation or voter ID law and you’re a hateful racisss for saying so.
As always, Monty Python anticipates real life, in the “Expedition to Lake Pahoe” sketch:
“ . . . there is no – I repeat, no – cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none. And when I say none, I mean that there is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit, but all new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find any toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they’re to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up.”
Joe Doakes
I think it’s hilarious that George Orwell’s 1984 has re-entered the best-seller list – since it was written about the Western far-left. And it still may as well be; the ease and fluency with which the left’s chanting points bots went from “Our electoral system is perfect, and you’re a racist misogynist transphobe traitor to suggest otherwise” to “our electoral system is a shambles” after November 8 would have beggared Orwell’s imagination.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
We know Democrats cheated in the election, they always do. The reason they lost is they didn’t cheat hard enough, possibly because they believed their own fake polls and thought she had it in the bag. That explains why they were so embarrassed when she lost – it’s their own damned fault for being so cocky.
Before the recount, Democrats confidently assured me there wasn’t a single smidgen of evidence that any voting fraud had ever happened and it was all my imagination.
But Jill Stein demanding the recount forced Michigan to ask “Why are there 300 votes for Hillary in this precinct but only 50 voters total?” Hell, why do a third of precincts show too many Hillary votes?
Cat.
Bag.
Okay, NOW can we talk about election fraud and voter ID?
Joe Doakes
That stuff that doesn’t exist, and where suggesting it is treason?
Heavens no.
Get out and vote today.
Assuming it matters. George Soros has been spending big bucks to control the system. And he’s just getting started:
The documents reveal that the Soros campaign fueled litigation attacking election integrity measures, such as citizenship verification and voter ID. It funded long-term efforts to fundamentally transform election administration — including the creation of databases that were marketed to state governments for use in voter verification. It propped up left-leaning media to attack reports of voter fraud, and conducted racially and ideologically targeted voter registration drives.
The racially targeted voter registration drives were executed at the same time Soros dollars were funding other public relations efforts to polarize racial minority groups by scaring them about the loss of voting rights and the dangers of police officers.
The Soros documents reveal hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into the effort to transform the legal and media environment touching on elections. One document notes that poverty-alleviation programs are being de-emphasized for this new effort. It states: “George Soros has authorized U.S. Programs to propose a budget of $320 million over two years, with the understanding that the annual budget for U.S. Programs will be $150 million beginning in 2013.”
To have a functional democracy, it’s important for people to trust their fellow citizens’ motives.
I don’t know that there’s any way to trust the motives of people who are floating on a raft of Sorosbucks.
SCENE: At the garden center. Mitch BERG is taking advantage of late-season blowouts when Avery LIBRELLE, carrying a lawn flamingo, steps around the corner, catching BERG by surprise.
LIBRELLE: Merg! You keep claiming there’s vote fraud. And yet there is not. There never has been and there never will be.
BERG: Well, the evidence in California and Chicago and Philadelphia and Maryland and Florida and a key and very swingy district in Virginia and Mississippi and of course right here in Minnesota says you’re wrong.
LIBRELLE: But the Brennan Center said there is no voter fraud!
BERG: Leaving aside the fact that the Brennan Center is pretty much devoted to undermining self-government and making society safe for our “elite” better to govern as they see fit, their “sources” were pretty much all election authorities confirming that nothing is wrong, nosirreebob. In most states where the fraud happens, it’s almost impossible to convict anyone for even the most bald-faced vote fraud.
LIBRELLE: But there’s more evidence!
BERG: Aaaand what’s that?
LIBRELLE: You’re racist. Hah!
(LIBRELLE turns and runs for the door)
BERG: Clearly.
(And SCENE)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Oooh, look there; an article about vote fraud. Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section.
Unless, of course, you are one of the commenters who’s made a habit of leaving extremely long, usually off-topic, usually condescending comments, purporting to “fact-check” my content, but usually proving only that you’re a terrible researcher with no command of logic:
You’ll need to respond in depth to this question in a previous thread. And respond to the responses. And then I will start letting your comments out of moderation. And only then. Your call. No skin off my teeth).
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Minnesota election law requires party delegates at the convention to designate electors and alternates. Minnesota Republicans failed to do that at their convention so party big-shots designated some afterwards. Democrats correctly pointed out this duct-tape fix failed to comply with the law and asked the Supreme Court to strike Trump’s name from the ballot.
The Secretary of State objected that early voting starts in 11 days and they’ve already printed a million ballots so it would cost a fortune to change the ballots now. The Supreme Court decided the Democrats had waited too long to bring the challenge and ruled against them based on the ancient equitable doctrine of laches.
Laches? Laches?!? That’s Republicans’ ace in the hole? That’s their big defense?
Laches is one of those kitchen-sink defenses you throw into the Answer when you’re totally desperate and have no defense on the merits of the case. It’s for losers and scoundrels and weasels. A major political party trying to get a Presidential candidate onto the ballot shouldn’t be relying on laches.
They really are the Stupid Party.
Joe Doakes
But why did the DFL file the suit – which, but for logistics and the appeal to, ahem, laches, might have succeeded?
Michael Brodkorb, newly at MinnPost, breaks that down. Short story short; there are people who get paid to be cynical about things like rules.
…in Minnesota’s legal system that I gave the DFL’s attempt to weasel Trump/Pence off the ballot a 50-50 chance of succeding.
Happy to be “disappointed”, this time at least.
In perhaps the most bald-faced violation of Berg’s Seventh Law in history, the DFL – which is constantly whinging about phantom claims of “voter suppression” – is actively trying to disenfranchise half of this state’s electorate in the Presidential election.
DFL Chair Ken “Dwight Schrute” Martin is sueing to keep Donald Trump off the Minnesota ballot in November, over an absurd, abstruse technicality in election law:
The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s Thursday lawsuit claims the Minnesota Republican Party failed to nominate its presidential electors, the people who cast the state’s 10 electoral college votes, in accordance with state law. Keith Downey, the chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, said last month that the party called a special meeting to approve alternative electors because it had previously neglected to do so.
One of these people is imitating Mussolini. The other was a character on a hit TV show.
The suit, which was filed directly to the Minnesota Supreme Court, adds a new level of chaos to an already strange election season. It could cause the parties to spend some of the rushed final eight weeks of the election fighting in court, distracting from other campaigning. While the suit is a technical one, if successful, it could affect the entire presidential election.
If the DFL wins – and one would think even Minnesota’s absurdly liberal Supreme Court couldn’t possibly be that obtuse – then long-time friend of this blog Dave Thul had a great idea; every conservative should vote for Jill Stein, and make the Greens a major party in Minnesota, sapping DFL votes for at least the next four years and drawing money from the DFL’s graft pool.
There’s also a part of me that hopes Martin “wins”. This – the most baldfaced example of corruption masquerading as law I’ve seen in my lifetime – would stand a good chance of opening an epic floodgate of support for Trump, or at least against Hillary’s party.
A regular reader of this blog (whose name does not rhyme with “Moe Jokes”) writes:
I know this has been talked about in Minneapolis for a few months, but when I read the following, I just couldn’t help but think that if you don’t rate voting as a high priority, perhaps you shouldn’t be voting. Perhaps, if you need your landlord to hold your hand through life’s responsibilities, you aren’t yet ready to live away from your parents.
“Council Member Jacob Frey, who sponsored the measure, said he could have used the reminder about voter registration when he was younger and frequently changed apartments.
“When you’re thinking about your study group and your track team and the girlfriend and the social and what you’re going to do that weekend, and all the other trillions of stimuli that you have at a university, for instance, you don’t think to register,” Frey said.”
You ever notice how the Democrat “get out the vote” machine is focused almost to exclusion on reaching people who don’t pay much attention to government and politics?
There’s a reason for that.
¡Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
When I went outside this morning to put up my American flag, a pickup full of illegal immigrants stopped to ask if this is where they vote Democrat For Immigration Amnesty. No dude, that’s the Rec Center down the street. And they don’t open til 8. Yes, ocho. Yeah you have a good day, too.
In Saint Paul, the line between satire and truth is so gray and blurry, it hardly exists.
Back in 2006, they told us that electronic voting machines were going to be an easy, non-transparent way to hijack elections.
Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library.
“I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”
The conservative website Illinois Review reported that “While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race.
There’s a simple answer, of course:
“This was a calibration error of the touch-screen on the machine,” Scalzitti said. “When Mr. Moynihan used the touch-screen, it improperly assigned his votes due to improper calibration.”
“I’m not robbing this bank, officer; I’m just doing a bad job of calibrating the safe”.
“That’s not a crack pipe under my seat, officer; its a poorly-calibrated CPAP mask”.
“Those weren’t dead people voting; just poorly-calibrated living people”.
I’m not going to say the Democrats are a criminal syndicate. I’m just wondering how they’d have to behave any differently to be one…