The Cure For What Ails Us

The cure for election fraud is scrutiny.  Make sure every ballot is legitimate, then count all legitimate ballots.  The process takes place in two parts.

First, scrutinize the paper ballots, same as we did in the “hanging-chads” count in Florida.  This requires three steps:

Step A: segregate ballots where the chain of custody is unclear.  If the elections officials can’t prove that the ballots in this box were slid into the voting machine at the Como Precinct, transferred to a locked box by John, transported to the County Elections Office by Stephanie, opened there by Roger, scanned by Trudy and re-locked, then stored by Darlene until the recount; then we cannot be confident they are legitimate ballots.  They might have been fraudulent ballots smuggled in under cover of darkness.  Segregate them for separate counting when and if the court decides to include them.

Step B: segregate ballots that lack procedural compliance: missing signature, spoiled ballot, arrived late, back-dated, etc.  They might have been accepted in violation of the law.  Some of these might be allowed, some might be rejected, but they cannot be dumped into the general mix.  Segregate them for separate counting when and if the court decides to include them.

Step C: make the court decide which ballots to count, which to exclude.  It’s critical to do this BEFORE the counting begins, to avoid influencing the decision. The last thing the public wants to hear is: “It doesn’t matter because it won’t overturn the results of the election.”  We don’t know that yet; we haven’t done the manual recount.  Make an impartial decision on the merits of the ballots, not the results you anticipate.

Finally, do a manual recount of each group of ballots.  Do NOT scan them into the voting machines.  The machines have a known history of vote switching.  Senator Klobuchar complained about it.  And counting machines are vulnerable to errors caused by missed software updates, on-line hackingfractionalized voting, and security breaches.  At this point, we have no guarantee the machine counts were correct so we must verify them by a manual recount, eyeballs on paper. 

Yes, it would cost a fortune.  Do you want an honest election or a cheap one?

Joe Doakes

This will require a clean GOP sweep at the polls in 2020. There is no other way. Steve Simon is hiding too much (on the behalf of the DFL, natch).

Motivations

So the pre-election polling saying the electorate was going toward Biden in landslide lots was wrong?

Who could have possibly figured that out?

Oh, yeah – anyone that’s been reading this blog for the past ten years.

There are three possible explanations:

1. Evolution! – The pollster’s craft hasn’t caught up with the “new normal”, in a society where people legitimately fear being “canceled”, losing jobs, social standing and being targeted for violence because of their beliefs.

That is simultaneously possible, and not mutually eclusive

2. Incompetence! – The pollsters absorbed the lessons of 2016, where they actually did a little better than they did this year…

…and learned nothing.

3. Never Ascribe to Incompetence What Can Be Chalked Up To Malice – I’m going to present three facts and a conjecture:

Fact 1 – On December 1, 2016, representatives of the New York Times and Washington Post newsrooms went on WNYC radio’s “On the Media“ program (syndicated on NPR) and said, In as many words, that was time to change the rules of journalism. It was time to move past “passing the facts on to people and letting them make up their own minds” to “Denormalizing Donald Trump“.

Fact 2 – in 1986, a UCLA psychology professor, Dr. Mehrabian, showed the existence of a “bandwagon effect“; when polls showed that a candidate had no chance of winning, “swing“ voters tended to stay home or vote for someone else.

Fact 3 – for the past 30 years, the Star Tribune “Minnesota Poll” has had a fairly clear pattern; the closer a race ended up being, the more wildly distorted pre-election polling numbers were. For example, they showed Tim Pawlenty, Norm Coleman and Tom Emmer getting blown out just before the election. All three races ended up being famously close. On the other hand, they tend to report blowouts pretty accurately; they had Amy Klobuchar and Kurt Bills pretty much dead on.

Conjecture: It’s not an “accident”, or a learning error, that polling predicting a landslide up until election day was completely wrong.

Thoughts?

What A Difference Four Years Makes

Far be it for me, a mere peasant, to question the journalistic integrity of the New York Times…But, may please the court of opinion, there might be a slight difference in the way the “newspaper of record” carried the two different announcements of vice presidential candidates, four years apart.Well, the key and I might notice it, anyway. Let’s see how you do:

“Kamala Jong Un” – Photo by Glamour Shots, K Street, Washington DC. I suspect it’s the same photographer who shoots Amy Klobuchar for the Star Tribune

Flashback four years:

I know I needed that bit of red highlighter, myself

But don’t you dare say the media is biased.

Privilege

Children of Tim Walz and Ilhan Omar made their sympathies known bright and early last week.

Isra Hirsi, daughter of Rep. Omar, tweeted out calls for ‘supplies’ for rioters. Called on it by Andy Ngo, she reverted to virtue-signaling:

Now, I can possibly cut Hope Walz a little slack. Make no mistake, she annoyed the crap out of me during the election; she spent a lot of time on Twitter dunking on her father’s opponents; when called out, she responded to the effect of “what, you’re attacking a high school kid for supporting her father?” So she’s definitely angling for a career as a professional feminist, and maybe Amy Klobuchar’s PR flak.

But she’s gotten some flak for this tweet:

And she’s not wrong. She was, in fact, relating facts; the National Guard doesn’t come sliding down a fire poll and jump into their Hummers and race to the scene when the governor gets on the radio – as some thought they did.

I’ll cut Walz – the younger, anyway – a little slack.

For Services Rendered

Democrat senators – including Amy Klobuchar – push for direct federal subsidies of local newspapers:

The senators wrote that “local journalism has been providing communities answers to critical questions, including information on where to get locally tested, hospital capacity, road closures, essential business hours of operation, and shelter-in-place orders.” Recent media reports indicate that local news organizations, especially newspapers, are “slashing staff and publishing less frequently as the already-battered businesses try to weather the COVID-19 storm.” According to the letter, some “local papers and local broadcasters have lost even more of the advertising revenue they rely on from these businesses” due to the coronavirus pandemic.

So have barber shops, mechanics, tobacco stores, comic book shops and every other small business in every other small non-metro town in the states affected by the draconian shutdowns.

None of them, as an industry, earns their keep by serving as the Democratic Party’s PR firm.

Hence, Public Broadcasting “qualified” for $75 million of the 2.2 trillion in Covid bailout money, while most small businesses are waiting for their allotted handouts; none of them participated in burying a single story about a single Democrat.  What use are they?

Serious Question

We’re told as of yesterday that Senator Klobuchar’s husband is in the hospital with National Healthcare VIrus.

In the statement, Klobuchar said [husband John] Bessler had a fever and was coughing up blood. He was checked into a hospital in Virginia and is receiving oxygen but is not on a ventilator.

“I love my husband so very much and not being able to be there at the hospital by his side is one of the hardest things about this disease,” Klobuchar said in a statement.

“While I cannot see him and he is of course cut off from all visitors, our daughter Abigail and I are constantly calling and texting and emailing,” she went on to state. “We love him very much and pray for his recovery. He is exhausted and sick but a very strong and resilient person.”

All these years pf campaign appearances and debates and fairground ops and every other kind of contact with her constituents, and I do not recall seeing any mention of John Bessier. Am I dense, or is the media softplaying his existence?

Or, for that matter their status (she’s in DC, he’s teaching law somewhere in Maryland)?

Speaking of Softpedaling: Ih this piece about John Bessier, the Channel 5 report helpfully finishes with this bit:

Klobuchar said she is working in the Senate to ensure Americans receive the help they need.

Sounds like reporter Rebecca Omastiak is bucking for campaign communications gig.

Their Progressive Majesties Demand

Minnesota’s Democrat congressional delegation sent a letter to Vice President Pence telling him it was unacceptable that doctors in our state didn’t have enough complete Corona virus test kits. Apparently, the test kits ship without an essential chemical and world-wide demand has been so high, there’s a shortage of the chemical.
The law of supply and demand is unacceptable!
Yeah? So roll up your sleeves and get to work, ladies. Start producing the chemical. Do something useful.

Or Shut The Hell Up and let the adults get back to work, dealing with the crisis as best they can with the tools at hand.

Joe Doakes

I’m wondering if episodes like this mean that Smith, Klobuchar, Craig, Phillips, McCollum, Omar and Peterson genuinely think the economy runs by command? (Don’t bet against that with Smith, McCollum and Omar). Or is it just election-year posturing?

Twin Cities Media, Then And Now

Twin Cities Media and Left (ptr), 2015: “Black Lives Matter were heroes for shutting down I94 during rush hour! Speak truth to power! Up next – Amanda Shapely at the Boat Show”

Twin Cities Media and the Left (ptr) 2020: “Black Lives Matter are a bunch of hooligans! Why weren’t the police able to keep order at Amy’s…er, Senator Klobuchar’s event?”

Will Esme Murphy Call It A “Hate Crime?”

And it started as such a big day for A-Klo, who shocked the world by winning the endorsement of the Star Tribune’s editorial board, a group composed of people who used to get blackout drunk with her father. There are no words to describe our amazement that the Strib – a paper that’s served not only as Klobuchar’s PR firm, but the controller of all information about her, thoughout her career, would make such a bold, brave…

…Oh, I can’t keep a straight face any more.

Anyway – the day didn’t end nearly as well, as protesters affiliated with Black Lives Matter, irate over the Myon Burrell case, derailed one of her love-fests in Saint Louis Park last night, bum-rushing the stage and occupying it until the campaign cried uncle:

“The campaign offered a meeting with the senator if they would leave the stage after being onstage for more than an hour,” the spokesperson said. “After the group initially agreed, they backed out of the agreement and we are canceling the event.”

Questions over Klobuchar’s prosecutorial record, namely her handling of the Burrell case when she was the top attorney in Hennepin County, Minn., have dogged the senator since she announced her presidential bid last year. Klobuchar has also faced criticism for declining to prosecute cases involving police accused of using excessive force against black suspects, The Washington Post’s Elise Viebeck and Michelle Ye Hee Lee reported.

How bad was it?

This bad (Twitter link here, in case the tweet below doesn’t display properly)

Bad enough that even the Twin CIties media didn’t try to cover it up.

Yet.

I wouldn’t want to be any of those protesters when A-Klo catches them alone, though.

A-Klo Belches, Calls It “Chanel Number 5”

Senator Klobuchar, fresh off having a third-place finish in a decreasingly important primary hailed like the victory march in Paris by a local who has acted like her personal PR firm ever since they were all getting pass-out drunk with her father, has this to say about gun control:

 

During the first 2020 Democratic primary debate, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said if there is a mandatory buyback, it would not involve gun confiscation.

“Gun confiscation, right, if the government is buying back, how do you not have that conversation?” moderator Chuck Todd asked.

“Well, that’s not gun confiscation because you give them the offer to buy back their gun,” Klobuchar said

Oh. It’s just a buyback.

OK. Not selling.

Now what?

They never answer this one directly, do they?

I may have to go to one of her “town halls” and ask her directly.

Oh, yeah – she said this:

“I look at these proposals and I say, ‘Does this hurt my uncle Dick and his deer stand?’ coming from a proud hunting and fishing state? These ideas don’t do that,” she added.

If her “Uncle Dick” is stupid enough to believe they won’t be coming for his precious dear rifle when, not if their current round of “gun safety” laws fail to make anyone safer, then Dick might just be a lifelong DFLer anyway.

I’ll Be Darned – A-Klo Must Have Mattered After All

I clearly read it all wrong. If A-Klo’s candidacy was the narcissistic joke I always assumed it was, she’d have never warranted a Iowa-Caucus-eve hit piece smackdown like this:

She told a story that she has cited throughout her political career, including during her 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate: An 11-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet while doing homework at her dining room table in 2002. And Klobuchar’s office put Tyesha Edwards’ killer — a black teen — behind bars for life.
But what if Myon Burrell is innocent?

The Tyesha Edwards shooting was an iconic event in urban life and Minneapolis crime; I’m not sure anyone who lived here, then, doesn’t remember that episode and what happened around it. It motivated the Minneapolis Police to get serious about crime (including a serious clean up of the Phillips neighborhood). (It also provided the DFL a template for their messaging on 2nd Amendment issues; Sen. Wes “Lyin Sack of Garbage” Skoglund claimed reforming “Shall Issue” laws would lead to thousands of such episodes, since gang bangers would be getting, yes, he said this, carry permits. But I digress).

A black teen, Myon Burrell, was arrested and eventually got a life sentence – a capstone in the career of a rapaciously ambitious county attorney, Amy Klobuchar.

If this was a movie, you’d know what’d happen next:

The AP reviewed more than a thousand pages of police records, court transcripts and interrogation tapes, and interviewed dozens of inmates, witnesses, family members, former gang leaders, lawyers and criminal justice experts.
The case relied heavily on a teen rival of Burrell’s who gave conflicting accounts when identifying the shooter, who was largely obscured behind a wall 120 feet away.
With no other eyewitnesses, police turned to multiple jailhouse snitches. Some have since recanted, saying they were coached or coerced. Others were given reduced time, raising questions about their credibility. And the lead homicide detective offered “major dollars” for names, even if it was hearsay.
There was no gun, fingerprints, or DNA. Alibis were never seriously pursued. Key evidence has gone missing or was never obtained, including a convenience store surveillance tape that Burrell and others say would have cleared him.
Burrell, now 33, has maintained his innocence, rejecting all plea deals.
His co-defendants, meanwhile, have admitted their part in Tyesha’s death. Burrell, they say, was not even there.
For years, one of them — Ike Tyson — has insisted he was actually the triggerman. Police and prosecutors refused to believe him, pointing to the contradictory accounts in the early days of the investigation. Now, he swears he was just trying to get the police off his back.

Read the whole thing, make up your own mind. Unlike most modern journalism, it’s worth a look.

Here’s the real question. Forget about the presidency – A-Klo was always running for VP anyway.

But if these allegations are borne out, and she comes around for her next Senate run in 2024, why would any black Minnesotan who doesn’t settle for being a permanent DFL vote ever think of voting for her?

Open Letter To Sen. Klobuchar And Every Single Minnesota DFLer

To: Sen Klobuchar
cc: the entire Minnesota DFL party
From: Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant
Re: Impeachment Now!

All,

What Senator Klobuchar said.

You owe it to progressivism, to the children, and to all the hopey changey to start working on impeachment now, to make it your only priority, and to spend your every waking moment between now and November 2020 working for it with your every waking breath, and some of the sleeping ones.

Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar says she would support impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump “beginning now.”
The Minnesota senator’s comment to CNN Friday followed Trump’s statement this week that he’d take information from a foreign power that offered dirt on an opponent.

Accept nothing less than impeachment!

NOW!

The Ghost of Paul Wellstone will cry if you waste any time or effort on lesser causes!

Give Away. Make Up For It With Volume.

It’s getting harder for Democrat candidates to come up with more free stuff than the next guy.  How can we bribe voters without free stuff?
Amy Klobuchar wants to give free savings accounts/pension plans, funded by employers and off-set by tax credits, handled by the Senate’s hand-picked fund managers to invest in stocks and bonds.
But she hasn’t fully considered why employees aren’t saving money.  They don’t make enough?  Everybody can always set aside a tiny fraction of their income.  The trick is finding the motivation to do it.  Churches solicit tithes with promises of salvation.  Amy wants tax credits with promises of mutual funds.  Not nearly as enticing.  I’d rather buy the extra fru-fru coffee. 
When somebody else subsidizes the consequences of your decisions to insulate you from harm, you have less incentive to make good choices.  In some circles, that’s known as moral hazard.  In Amy’s, it’s a campaign promise.
Joe Doakes

The more dependent they make society on “the authorities” for basic life decisions, the more control they have.

Again: America Made Great

Progressives love America.

Well, no. Let me rephrase that.  Progressives love the idea that America is a big, powerful, wealthy place that they might control someday. 

That’s more like it. 

They may protest the point – but they let the truth slip on occasion; Michelle Obama’s “This is the first time I’ve been proud to be an American”, and of course Eric Holder’s “This nation was never great”. 

Christian Adams has an excellent reminder. The whole thing’s a pullquote, so I’m just going to do the conclusion: 

America is an idea, a great idea, that all are created in the image of God as free. That idea, not always perfectly executed, transformed the world. Along the way, it also limited government. The freedoms enshrined in the Constitution restrain the power of government. Government cannot act the way progressives want because the Constitution stands in the way. After decades of trying to redefine the notion of freedom in the courts, Holder and his gang have hit a Trump wall, where judicial nominees no longer subscribe to the utopian view of the Constitution.

Let’s hope that Eric Holder changes his mind and decides to run for president. Do us a favor. Go to Iowa, Texas, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania and tell Americans there that America was really never great. Please.

I’d love to see it.

Of course, they have a way of changing their tone when they have to. See also Amy Klobuchar.

Funny How That Works

The party of James Hodgkinson, of “Anti”-Fa, of Eric “Nuke The Gun Owners” Swalwell, of “Fight in the Streets” (VP candidate Tim Kaine and Loretta Lynch ) and demands for military coups (Sarah Silverman) and punching teenage girls (Woody Kaine) and grownup girls (Keith “Thumper” Ellison) and fantasies (Madonna, Snoop Dogg, Bow Wow) and dramatizations (Kathy Griffin) and internal media threads about killing Republicans, of multiple dramatic and “comedic” productions featuring the violent deaths of Republicans (including Dubya and The Donald), of co-opting the same of a movement that killed “the enemy” with guns and bombs and molotov cocktails (“The #Resistance“) and generalized inchoate rage (Amy “Dearest” Klobuchar) and countless threats against everyone from the Covington Kids to yours truly and my friends, and a generalized climate of violent bigotry and hatred, not to mention a two year long tantrum over losing an election to which they felt entitled…

…is upset that Representative Cal Bahr, in a bit of rhetorical flourish, urged a group of people who are, statistically speaking, 42 times less likely to commit ANY violent crime than the general public to “run over” and “stomp on”…

…a couple of pieces of really stupid legislation.

Yeah, let’s call it even.

#Bergs7thLaw

Forget The Russians…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I gave up my landline years ago. The only people who called me were telemarketers. It was nice having a cell phone, because nobody bothered me. But lately, I’ve been deluged with telemarketers robocalling recorded announcements about health insurance. This would be illegal on landlines, but for cell phones, there seem to be no rules

What I want to know is, how did they get my number? It’s not listed in the phone book. I did not sign up for anything. Except Facebook. And Google. And Amazon. And pretty much every other website, which requires me to have a backup phone number in case I get locked out of my account. Which one of these leaked my phone to the telemarketers? Which one of these sold my number?

I’d like Amy Klobuchar to offer legislation to give letters of Marque and Reprisal to any private citizen who can track down these telemarketers so we can seize their computers, their phones, their bank accounts, their assets, and even their pet dogs. I’d even contribute to her reelection campaign.

Joe Doakes

I’d pay extra for a cell/data service and media apps that actually kept my data private.

But I don’t suspect that’s the point…

#Resist

In previous years, I’ve given way to gusts of logorrhea and come up with “100 Reasions…” to vote (for the most part) for the GOP slate.

I don’t need 100 this year.    If you’re a thinking person who cares about having a Representative Republic with checks and balances, you shouldn’t either.

The notion of Angie Craig, Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Dean Phillips and Dan Feehan “representing” you in DC should terrify you, if you care about living in a representative republic that believes (as imperfectly as the GOP practices this belief) in rights and powers enumerated to the states and the people should terrify you.   They’re the party that is actively taking not only about eliminating the Electoral College, but in some circles applying the Popular Vote on a national level to the House of Representatives (because winning a share of the nation’s districts by 40 points and losing most of the nation by 11-3 points isn’t enough of a verdict for them).

And the Dems’ rhetoric this cycle has been the greatest, most systematic violation of Berg’s Seventh Law I hope ever to see; jabbering about white right wing conservative violence (that never happens) while studiously ignoring the steady drizzle of attacks by their people; yakking about “voter suppression” while benefitting from decades of gerrymandering (hello, CD4 and 5).

And they’re barely bothering with the pretense that “Gun Safety” and “Gun VIolence Prevention” isn’t about disarming the law-abiding anymore.

And if the though of Keith Ellison being the state’s chief law enforcement office doesn’t fill you with thoughts of heading for the woods and going off the grid, the notion of a Governor Walz driving the 2020 redistricting as the state loses a Rep and yet another DFL-leaning judicial committee gerrymanders the state to give Metrocrats yet another ten year stranglehold on your pocketbook should.

I’ve said it before; while I have voted for Democrats, even in the 35 years since I became a conservative, it needs to be said:  while Ronald Reagan would be a tad to the right of the mainstream national GOP today, a DFL party that rejected Lori Swanson would pelt John F. Kennedy with rocks and garbage – and Kennedy governed to the right of Erik Paulsen.

So I’ll be #resisting the Democrats, and the DFL, by voting a straight GOP ticket.  Not because I think the GOP has done the job I wanted them . (and voted for them) to do, but because the Democrats are actively working to destroy what this country is  supposed to  be about.

I Heard It On The NARN

Dave Hughes has a strong shot at shocking the world up on the Minnesota Seventh.  Every dollar helps.

Shane Mekeland is running for MN House in 15B . He’ll be replacing Jim Newberger up in the greater Becker area.

Jason Lewis is running for re-election in MN CD2.  He could use a hand.

Pam Myhra is running for State Auditor – the only auditor among the two major-party candidates.  She could use a hand.

Jim Newberger is running for US Senate against Amy “The Kavanator” Klobuchar – rated as the worst boss in the US Senate.   Please help him out.

And yes, you can help Doug Wardlow usher Keith Ellison out of public life.   Please do.

Image To Remembet

Tina Smith didn’t show up for her debate with Karin Housley on KSTP last night.

On the one hand, this is the time of the race went under dogs in challengers get that notion, all too often mistaken, that “this could actually happen!”. It’s a time in many races when hearts of plucky challengers start on the road to getting completely, utterly, totally crushed.

On the other hand – this is been an interesting week. The polls in the eighth congressional district jumped 15 points in favor of Pete Stauber as, I suspect, the likely voter model became clearer. The star Tribune “Minnesota Paul” show the governor’s race is very, very tight, and we’re hearing anecdotal reports that Collin Petersen and even Amy Klobuchar are having to actually work, this year.

That in mind – it’s common political wisdom that debates never benefit front runners – all you can do is screw up. At this point in the race, is Tina Smith playing the prevent defense, watching out for last minute flubs?

Fingers crossed, here.

-1

North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp seems to be on the path to political palookaville even before this week; polls were showing her trailing republican Kevin Cramer by two digit margins.

A fiasco over the weekend would seem to have not only put the final nail in her political coffin, but if there is any justice in the world should be tied into the Democrats frothing hypocrisy on #MeToo.

The Senator and her campaign placed an ad in the Bismarck Tribune with “signatures” from 127 “sexual assault survivors“. It was in response to a statemenr by Cramer that indicated North Dakota women were too tough to get sexually harassed:

Sen Heitkamp was upset by this and apparently decided to capitalize on it by running a full-page ad in the Bismarck Times [it’s the Bismarck Tribune – Ed.] and several other papers on Sunday. The ad contains a statement about survivors of sexual abuse and is signed by 127 women who, in the context of the ad, are identifying themselves as survivors. But some of the women named in the ad came forward to say they never consented to have their names appear in it.

And some have since come forward to say that they weren’t survivors of any form of sexual abuse at all, and at least one said that she had only told a few people about her episode, and found the whole thing really, really scary.

(One must also wonder if the Democrat party doesn’t expect us to “believe survivors” by dint of the fact that the Democrat party puts them out there as “survivors”, facts be damned.)

In a just world, this will not only take down Heitkamp, but slop over onto Amy Klobuchar.

The Twin Cities Media Won’t Cover This…

…I don’t suspect – but I will:

The governor’s race is inside “Statistical Noise” levels.   Ditto Housley and Smith.   (Klobuchar is shown nine up over Newberger, which is closer than other polls as well).

Last week, an NBC/Marist poll claimed Walz and Smith were pulling away – this being the same poll that showed Tim Pawlenty and Lori Swanson winning the gubernatorial primaries in landslides.   Was that a media/Democrat attempt to “bandwagon” Republicans into staying home?

Maybe, maybe not.

But don’t get bandwagoned anyway.