The Right Coast

High school forces student to remove pro-Trump face mask, allows pro-Biden masks: warning letter | The College Fix

Not only was Bradford’s claim about the dress code false, but Northwest Rankin High has “[a]pparently” allowed students and teachers, “without reprimand,” to wear face masks and other clothing supporting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, gay rights and the Black Lives Matter movement, according to a legal warning letter sent on Election Day.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Ferguson, told Rankin County Board of Education President Grumpy Farmer (yes, that’s his name) that the dress code “gives too much discretion to administrators to censor viewpoints such as Mr. Ferguson’s while permitting other opposing viewpoints.”

It explicitly prohibits clothing and masks with “suggestive, obscene, disruptive, or vulgar designs, pictures, symbols, slogans or statements that cause a disruption to or detract from the educational process.”

The school must “immediately” let Ferguson wear his pro-Donald Trump mask (above), revise the dress-code policy “to prevent further discrimination” based on viewpoint, and train its staff on the First Amendment rights of students, the letter says.

The alliance warns the school board not to ignore the public interest law firm, which has nine victories at the U.S. Supreme Court in the past nine years.

via www.thecollegefix.com

UC Berkeley ‘eugenics fund’ suspended amid outrage, but questions remain | The College Fix

University of California Berkeley recently publicly disavowed its “Genealogical Eugenics Institute Fund,” which had been run by the public institution for about four decades but was quietly suspended in 2018 after questions and concerns were raised about the program.

via www.thecollegefix.com

Why not ‘My Fuhrer’? Appeals court grills public college on forcing professor to call male student ‘miss’ | The College Fix

A public university’s lawyer bumbled his way through oral argument last week on whether his taxpayer-funded client can force a philosophy professor to address a male student with female pronouns.

Sharp questioning by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly left Keating Muething’s Paul Kerridge at a loss for words, including on whether Ohio’s Shawnee State University could similarly force a Jewish professor to address a student as “My Fuhrer.”

via www.thecollegefix.com

Urban-Rural Divide Shapes American Culture & Politics | National Review

That fact of the rural/urban dichotomy is underappreciated, but it remains at the heart of the Constitution — to the continuing chagrin of our globalist coastal elite who wish to wipe it out. The Electoral College and the quite antithetical makeup of the Senate and the House keep a Montana, Utah, or Wyoming from being politically neutered by California and New York. The idea, deemed outrageously “unfair” by academics and the media, is that a Wyoming rancher might have as much of a say in the direction of the country as thousands of more redundant city dwellers. Yet the classical idea of federal republicanism was to save democracy by not allowing 51 percent (of an increasingly urban population) to create laws on any given day at any given hour.

via www.nationalreview.com

VDH.

UMD Public Policy School Mandating Ideological Statements on Syllabus, Requiring That Class “Materials” and “Discussions” “Respect All Forms of Diversity” – Reason.com

The University of Maryland School of Public Policy School is apparently about to require faculty members to add a statement to their syllabus; here's the cover e-mail, which I got from a source that appears to me reliable.

via reason.com

Good grief.

Rubio derides Biden's foreign policy team: 'Polite and orderly caretakers of America's decline'

“Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline,” the Florida Republican tweeted Tuesday.

That’s an opening salvo in what is likely to be a frosty confirmation process following years of party-line votes on President Trump’s nominees. Biden’s initial round of hires disappointed some of the most ardent liberals, but Rubio’s acerbic reaction underscores the downsides of conventionality.

“I support American greatness,” he added. “And I have no interest in returning to the ‘normal’ that left us dependent on China.”

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms

While Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 totals in every urban county in the United States, he outperformed her in the metropolitan areas of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Even more surprising, the former VP put up a record haul of votes, despite Democrats’ general failures in local House and state legislative seats across the nation.

He accomplished all this after receiving a record low share of the primary vote compared to his Republican opponent heading into the general election. Clearly, these are tremendous and unexpected achievements that would normally receive sophisticated analysis from the journalist class but have somehow gone mostly unmentioned during the celebrations at news studios in New York City and Washington, D.C.

The massive national political realignment now taking place may be one source of these surprising upsets. Yet still, to have pulled so many rabbits out of his hat like this, nobody can deny that Biden is a first-rate campaigner and politician, the likes of which America has never before seen. Let’s break down just how unique his political voodoo has been in 2020.

via thefederalist.com

Why Were Canadians Warned Not to Let Moose Lick Their Cars? - The New York Times

Visitors at a Canadian national park were greeted with a rather unusual digital road sign this weekend: “Do not let moose lick your car.”

The sign caught the imagination of the internet and led to questions like:

“What happens if a moose licks your car?”

“Is it really that big of a problem?”

And, perhaps most salient: “Exactly how would you stop them?”

via www.nytimes.com

Mnuchin plans to put $455 billion beyond Yellen’s easy reach – HotAir

Mnuchin plans to place the money into the agency’s General Fund, a Treasury Department spokesperson said Tuesday. That fund can only be tapped with “authority based on congressionally issued legislation,” according to the Treasury’s website.

The money includes $429 billion that Mnuchin is clawing back from the Federal Reserve — which backed some of the central bank’s emergency lending facilities — and $26 billion that Treasury received for direct loans to companies. Both initiatives were created under the sweeping Cares Act that was passed earlier this year as the coronavirus pandemic inflicted economic pain on the U.S.

via hotair.com

‘People are pissed’: Tensions rise amid scramble for Biden jobs - POLITICO

It is still early in the Biden transition. There are thousands of jobs to fill. But a similar sense of dread is starting to bubble up from veterans of the Biden campaign, particularly those who were there with the president-elect from the Philadelphia announcement speech to the Wilmington victory speech. The target of their ire? The Obama establishment, which has eclipsed the Clinton name as shorthand for yesterday’s Democratic Party.

“The Obama staffers are now cutting out the people who got Biden elected,” said a senior Biden official channeling the feelings of the old guard of the Biden campaign, who requested anonymity for the obvious reason. “None of these people found the courage to help the VP when he was running and now they are elevating their friends over the Biden people. It’s f----- up.”

via www.politico.com

Marco Rubio has clashed with Biden’s secretary of state nominee over Cuba

“There’s no way that Biden nominations are going to be treated like they traditionally have been treated under previous presidents simply because the atmosphere in the Senate has changed,” Rubio said, “and frankly, because of the way the Democrats have just been so unfair during the Trump years on some of these nominees that they simply oppose them because the president is for them.”

via www.tampabay.com

California Legal Cannabis Sales Exploded. And California is Cashing In | Wolf Street

Cannabis tax revenues in Q3 collected by the State of California soared by a record 80% year-over-year, and by a record of $136 million year-over-year, to a $307 million, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration reported Monday afternoon. This does not include tax revenues collected by cities and counties. All three categories surged: Excise Tax (+90%), Cultivation Tax (+80%), and Sales Tax (+66%).

via wolfstreet.com

Collect your stimulus check and then get stimulated.

'Beyond an embarrassment,' legal experts say of Trump and Giuliani's floundering efforts in court

On Monday, the campaign filed its appeal of a federal judge's ruling dismissing the campaign's lawsuit in Pennsylvania challenging some mail-in votes.

The appeal complained the judge in the case, Matthew Brann, "misconstrued the remedy sought. The Campaign is not seeking to disenfranchise 6.8 million Pennsylvanians," as the judge wrote in his scathing decision — and Giuliani acknowledged in a court hearing last week.

The appeal says the campaign just wanted to set aside some ballots that they believe may be defective — and then notes that one of the remedies they're seeking is "an order that the results of the 2020 Presidential general election are defective, which would allow the Pennsylvania General Assembly to choose Pennsylvania's electors" — in other words, which would disenfranchise 6.8 million Pennsylvanians by dismissing their votes.

The filing at one point refers to ballots as "ballets," and another of the campaign's filings earlier in the day referred to "Presidential Donald J. Trump" instead of president.

That earlier filing — which said the campaign was only appealing part of Brann's order but then added it might appeal other parts of the order — led to confusion from other defendants in the case, who said it was improper and they couldn't understand what exactly the campaign was seeking.

It also wasn't the first such filing since Trump named Giuliani his lead lawyer. Earlier in the same Pennsylvania case, Giuliani was seeking to add back in arguments his predecessors had dropped, presumably because they didn't have the evidence to back their claims. "The lawyers thought they were losers," Sanderson said.

Also Monday, the campaign lost another lawsuit in Pennsylvania state court — the latest in a string of dozens of court losses in six swing states since the election, most of which were started by Giuliani's predecessors.

via www.nbcnews.com

Filing a case in federal court is a serious business. You have to know what you're doing. Giuliani has long since forgotten how to do it, and the people he has working for him are not any good. Sad commentary on Trump's legal team. Query how things would have turned out if he had any decent lawyers working for him, and if the decent lawyers he had working for him were not scared off the case. So in this case, I guess you have to know what you are doing and to have a lot of courage. A rare combination as it happens.

Hope for a Normal Future | City Journal

When the FDA issued its guidance for final approval of any Covid-19 vaccine, many estimated that the broad impact of effective Covid vaccines on daily life would not be experienced by most until early 2022. The cascade of factors that led to this view were the FDA guidance that any approved vaccine might only be 50 percent effective, that production and delivery of the vaccine was extremely challenging, and that a significant number of individuals were hesitant to get the vaccine. With the recent reports by two vaccine makers (Pfizer and Moderna) of the results of their preliminary analysis of their Phase 3 trials showing greater than 90 percent protection—and now today’s announcement of a third, AstraZeneca’s, also boasting 90 percent effectiveness—there is cause for more optimism about the timeline for resuming life.

via www.city-journal.org

I don't think I've ever looked forward so much to getting a shot.

The Greatest Scandal of our Lifetime | The American Conservative

What if I told you that thousands of lives could be saved during this pandemic if we followed the science?

Instead of following the science, governments around the world are implementing the exact opposite of effective measures to combat the pandemic. Governments and health officials from first world countries are pursuing lockdowns and advising patients to wait until their symptoms worsen before going to the hospital seeking treatment. Sadly, this is the approach many countries have taken for the COVID-19 virus. Lockdowns are destroying lives economically, mentally, and physically, while the elites are becoming richer and profiting off of the destruction of the middle class and the poor.

Also egregious is the lack of an outpatient treatment plan for people who come down with Covid. In the NIH’s recommended treatment protocol, there is no recommended treatment for non-hospitalized patients. ‘Isolate in your home and wait until your condition gets so bad you have to go to the hospital’ is the NIH’s position. A patient’s treatment only begins once they are hospitalized. This is akin to using dial-up internet compared to today’s high-speed internet. It does not have to be this way. We can effectively provide outpatient treatment care to patients with the virus in a safe and cheap manner.

via www.theamericanconservative.com

Byron York's Daily Memo: What next for Trump legal team?

So it was politically ill-advised -- some would say crazy -- to seek to "blow up" Georgia. The goal for Republicans is to win Georgia. They will not do that by accusing the state's Republican governor, who is a strong supporter of the president, of corruption. They will not do that by alleging that hundreds of thousands of Georgians had their votes secretly changed by software from Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Instead, they will win Georgia by campaigning there and by supporting the two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are running. It appears the White House might have finally figured that out.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Insanity.

Mystifying monolith found amid Utah rocks

Wildlife officials in Utah were counting sheep from a helicopter when they discovered a shiny metal monolith in a remote area that looks straight out of a Stanley Kubrick film.

via nypost.com

Aliens I bet.

The Economic Emergency In 2020 and Beyond Won't Be Covid | RealClearMarkets

Though failing as a politician (running for Mayor of New York City twice, he lost both times but managed more votes than a young Theodore Roosevelt in the 1886 election), George remained a widely celebrated and prolific writer. Summing up his views in an article published in the magazine Once A Week, in March 1894, just as another even more terrible depression had been unleashed, he said:

“So the first step toward determining the causes of business depression is to see what business depression really is. By business depression we mean a lessening in rapidity and volume of the exchanges by which, in our highly specialized industrial system, commodities pass into the hands of consumers. This lessening of exchanges, which from the side of the merchant or manufacturer we call business depression, is evidently not due to any scarcity of the things that merchants or manufacturers have to exchange. From that point of view there seems, indeed, a plethora of such things. Nor is it due to any lessening in the desire of consumers for them. On the contrary, seasons of business depression are seasons of bitter want on the part of large numbers, of want so intense and general that charity is called on to prevent actual starvation from need of things that manufacturers and merchants have to sell.”

via www.realclearmarkets.com

(37) MMT Explained with Dr. Robert Murphy - YouTube

Do we fund government or does government fund us? Can sovereign states issue currency at will without risk of default? Are government deficits actually a form of public wealth? And can newly issued currency (rather than taxes or bonds) be used to pay for public works, health care, college, entitlements, and guaranteed jobs? These are the arguments made by Professor Stephanie Kelton in The Deficit Myth, the latest addition to the "Modern Monetary Theory" concept. If it sounds too good to be true, it is—and Dr. Murphy joins the show to explain why.

via www.youtube.com

Trump fears Giuliani and other Biden vote challenge lawyers are fools

President Donald Trump is sweating over his campaign lawyers’ dismal and often outlandish efforts to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s projected electoral victory.

Trump is worried that his campaign’s legal team, which is being led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is comprised of “fools that are making him look bad,” NBC News reported Monday.

That crew, which has unironically called itself an “elite strike force team,” to date has failed to win any legal victories that would invalidate votes for Biden, the former Democratic vice president, even as the legal eagles tout wildly broad claims of fraud for which they have offered no convincing evidence.

via www.cnbc.com

He's right.

‘I Am Shaken’: Spate of Violent Subway Attacks Unnerves Riders - The New York Times

The three attacks were part of a worrying trend: After overall crime on the subway dropped significantly during the citywide lockdown this spring, violent crimes have started to increase. So far this year, incidents of felony assault, rape, homicide and robbery on the subway have surpassed the number of those crimes committed in the same period last year.

Now, as the financially battered transit agency that runs the system warns of major service cuts and fare hikes if it does not get substantial federal aid, the rise in crime has stirred fears among riders and complicated officials’ efforts to coax people back to the subway.

via www.nytimes.com

1979 here we come.

Alan Dershowitz: Trump has two or three possible constitutional paths to 2020 victory

Constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz said President Trump has a limited number of strategies to change the results of the 2020 election.

During an interview with Fox News's Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Derschowitz, who defended Trump during his impeachment trial earlier this year, said there are a maximum of three "legal, constitutional paths" to victory. However, he added the president's legal team will face a variety of challenges that he thinks will likely prevent the results from being overturned.

"For example, in Pennsylvania, they have two very strong legal arguments. One, that the courts changed what the legislature did about counting ballots after the end of Election Day. That's a winning issue in the Supreme Court. I don't necessarily support it, but it's a winning issue in the Supreme Court," Dershowitz said on Sunday Morning Futures, adding, "They also have a winning issue in the Supreme Court on equal protection, that some counties flawed ballots to be cured while others didn't. Bush v. Gore suggests that an Equal Protection argument can prevail."

Dershowitz gave a caveat to the second argument, saying President-elect Joe Biden's vote lead may prevent Trump's team from contesting a sufficient number of ballots.

"The other legal theory they have, which is a potentially strong one, is that the computers, either fraudulently or by glitches, changed hundreds of thousands of votes. There, there are enough votes to make a difference, but I haven't seen the evidence to support that," the constitutional expert said. "So, in one case, they don't have the numbers. In another case, they don't seem yet to have the evidence, maybe they do. I haven't seen it. But the legal theory is there to support them if they have the numbers and they have the evidence."

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Trump would have done better to hire Dershowitz as his chief counsel instead of Guiliani who is, let us say, well past his prime, and he was always a better politician than lawyer. This in spite of Dershowitz's obvious character flaws. There are lots of other good lawyers out there. Trump seems to think celebrity equals competence. Of course, he'd have to pay up front, and that's probably an issue for Trump.

Florida Bar Exam Results Are Out | Above the Law

The Florida Bar Exam was a complete and utter disaster. They tried to hold it in person, then moved online, then had a string of failures that kept pushing off the date, eventually they fired the online provider, then they went ahead through a wave of technical problems, and throughout it all kept sending contradictory messages about the content of the exam (MBE? No MBE? Florida stuff? Federal stuff? WHO KNOWS?!?!). Every step of the way, the jurisdiction swiped the football like they were Lucy Van Pelt. And now we have the results from the exam.

via abovethelaw.com

50 percent is terrible.

Tens of Thousands of Pennsylvania Ballots Returned Earlier Than Sent Date: Researcher

More than 20,000 absentee ballots in Pennsylvania have impossible return dates and another more than 80,000 have return dates that raise questions, according to a researcher’s analysis of the state’s voter database.

Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out—an extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.

The state’s voter records are being scrutinized as President Donald Trump is challenging the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania and other states where his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, holds a tight lead. The Trump campaign is alleging that invalid ballots have been counted for Democrats and valid ballots for Republicans were thrown away.

via epochtimes.today

I wonder if Team Trump would have won their challenge in PA if they were competently represented. Oh well.

Powell: I'll release the "Kraken on steroids" soon even after getting cut loose by Team Trump

If Powell had anything to release, Team Trump wouldn’t have cut her loose in the first place. However, there’s something valid in Powell’s claim to be working for “we the people,” Isaac Schorr pointed out last night at The Corner. Powell has been crowdfunding her efforts from followers, and Schorr calls the effort “a glorified cash register”:

via hotair.com

Anything involved with giant squids is bound to be evil.

The first rule of Sex Club is...

To say that some of the denizens of New York City are taking their social distancing responsibilities a bit on the light side would probably be something of an understatement. Just last week we learned that the NYPD had been called to break up a real-life “fight club” where hundreds of people were drinking, getting high, and, well… fighting, all without the benefit of masks or other safety precautions. Not to be outdone, a different group was busted by the Gotham Sheriffs for going in the opposite direction and throwing a similarly large gathering, but instead of fighting, they were engaging in group sex activities. Described as an “underground swingers sex club,” the revelers had advertised a Caligula themed bash in Queens and appeared to be creating quite a ruckus before they were shut down. (NY Post)

via hotair.com

I could see going to a fight club but not a sex club. Maybe that's why I tend to go more red than blue.

Why did Team Trump dump Sidney Powell?

The whole reason Senate GOPers are biting their tongues about Trump’s attempt to overturn the election is that they’re trying to keep the base onside in Georgia. They’re stuck between two constituencies they’re trying to appease, the Trump fans who want to believe that the election was rigged and the suburbanites who voted for Biden in the general election but might be willing to come back to the party provided it doesn’t seem too crazy. Powell was alienating both groups. Tying Trump’s legal effort to a conspiracy theory that somehow involved Hugo Chavez was a WTF moment for everyone outside the most activist parts of the populist base, including suburbanites. But accusing Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger, and even Kelly Loeffler — who’s on the ballot on January 5 — of being involved was destined to torch populist support for turning out on January 5 by convincing MAGA fans that the fix was in and that voting is pointless. Remember, Lin Wood is already openly calling for Republican voters in the state to boycott the runoffs in protest:

via hotair.com

Who are these people?

'Very strange': Devin Nunes says Democrats lack confidence in Biden victory

There is something "very strange" about the way Democrats are treating the 2020 election, according to Rep. Devin Nunes.

The California Republican, who is the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said even President-elect Joe Biden and his team are not acting like winners, although they are putting up "a facade" of victory.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

A dozen compelling allegations of voting irregularities in 2020 election | Just The News

Here are the 12 most compelling pieces of evidence presented to the courts as of Sunday night:

City of Detroit worker swears she witnessed thousands of ballots being falsified

Of all the sworn statements to date, career civil servant Jessy Jacob of Detroit provided the most sweeping claim of election fraud.

She stated in an affidavit she personally witnessed — and in some cases was instructed — to backdate thousands of absentee ballots the day after the election to make them appear legal even though they were not in the Qualified Voter File and had not arrived by the deadline. "I estimate that this was done to thousands of ballots," her sworn statement says.

Jacob also described how in the weeks before Election Day she witnessed Detroit poll workers skipping voter ID checks and that she was "instructed by my supervisor to adjust the mailing date of these absentee ballot packages to be dated earlier than they were actually sent. The supervisor was making announcements for all workers to engage in this practice."

via justthenews.com

Israel PM Netanyahu secretly met with Saudi crown prince: reports | Fox News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled overnight by a civilian jet to Saudi Arabia reportedly for a secret meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which would mark the first known encounter between senior Israeli and Saudi officials.

A Gulfstream IV private jet left Tel Aviv on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. local time and flew directly to the seaside resort town of Neom, according to FlightRadar.

Netanyahu headed back to Israel after two hours on the ground, arriving in Tel Aviv half past midnight.

via www.foxnews.com

Mazel tov.

Democratic Member Seeks To Disbar Two Dozen Lawyers Challenging Election Results – JONATHAN TURLEY

We have been discussing the campaign of harassment and threats against Republican lawyers to get them to drop election challenges. New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell expanded that campaign this week with a malicious and frivolous demand for New York and other states to disbar roughly two dozen lawyers for representing Trump, the Republican party, or the Trump campaign in the litigation.  While Democratic members and the media discuss attacks on democracy and the rule of law, they appear to have little problem with campaigns to threaten and harass both lawyers and legislators for raising questions about the election.

via jonathanturley.org

This is really bad.

The Green End Game Runs Through Biden - American Greatness

Yet getting hysterical about the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a waste of emotional energy. The environmental movement’s real power derives from those who occupy “the commanding heights” of our society—at the corporate, media, and academic realms. Though arguably not holding views as economically ludicrous as AOC’s, mainstream corporate greens are far more likely to successfully impose their version of environmental justice on the rest of us.

via amgreatness.com

Swell.

Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell Promises ‘Biblical’ Lawsuit in Coming Days

Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell on Saturday said that the president’s lawyers will file a lawsuit of “biblical” proportions, alleging that some elections officials were embroiled in a pay-to-play scheme with a prominent manufacturer of voting software.

“We’ve got tons of evidence; it’s so much, it’s hard to pull it all together,” Powell told Newsmax. She didn’t provide or elaborate on the evidence.

“Hopefully this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical,” Powell asserted, adding that “it’s a massive project to pull this fraud claim together with the evidence that I want to put in.”

Powell said that voting system’s algorithms provided Democrats 35,000 extra votes, although she didn’t elaborate. She added that Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s votes were “weighted” at 1.25 times while President Donald Trump’s votes were parsed at 0.75.

via www.theepochtimes.com

At this point, I'm skeptical.

End game? Federal judge in PA aggressively boots Trump lawsuit

We’ve been hearing one story after another about massive fraud. When such claims are made, they clearly need to be investigated. But thus far that’s all we’ve seen… claims. If there’s any hard evidence of irregularities on such a massive scale that they would begin invalidating the elections in any of these states, that proof needed to be presented yesterday, if not far sooner. Yes, we’ve discovered and highlight individual instances of people requesting ballots for their dead relatives and ballots winding up in dumpsters here and there. But the accusations being leveled by the Trump campaign would require some sort of massive, systemic fraud. We can’t expect the courts, no matter who is sitting at the bench, to simply toss out an entire election based on witnesses who didn’t like the way something looked in a counting room. If the voting machines were switching votes to Biden, the paper ballots should have revealed that during the hand counts. But the evidence simply hasn’t been presented at this point.

via hotair.com

Trump Using Last Days to Lock In Policies and Make Biden’s Task More Difficult - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Voters have decided that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. should guide the country through the next four years. But on issues of war, the environment, criminal justice, trade, the economy and more, President Trump and top administration officials are doing what they can to make changing direction more difficult.

Mr. Trump has spent the last two weeks hunkered down in the White House, raging about a “stolen” election and refusing to accept the reality of his loss. But in other ways he is acting as if he knows he will be departing soon, and showing none of the deference that presidents traditionally give their successors in their final days in office.

via www.nytimes.com

Sounds like the last days of the Clinton administration.

Portuguese Court Rules PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful” – OffGuardian

An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that the PCR process is not a reliable test for Sars-Cov-2, and therefore any enforced quarantine based on those test results is unlawful.

Further, the ruling suggested that any forced quarantine applied to healthy people could be a violation of their fundamental right to liberty.

Most importantly, the judges ruled that a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection.

via off-guardian.org

Chuck Todd: The Michigan Supreme Court Did Not “Cite Any Law” In Ruling Whitmer’s Actions Unconstitutional – JONATHAN TURLEY

Chuck Todd interviewed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer this morning and turned to the recent decision of the Michigan Supreme Court that ruled that she had violated the Michigan Constitution in her extended pandemic orders. Todd did not challenge Whitmer stating falsely that the opinion was a “partisan” decision. It was not. The “Democrat justices” agreed that Whitmer violated the Constitution. They only disagreed on the remedy.  However, that untruth was quickly lost in what was a flagrantly untrue statement by Todd himself. He told NBC viewers that the justices did not cite any law to support their decision against Whitmer. Todd stated as fact that the Court did not “cite any Michigan law, they didn’t cite any law in deciding that you didn’t have this power.” The roughly 50 page opinion contains over 60 cases discussed in support of the decision. It does not seem to matter anymore at Meet The Press or NBC.  NBC is not alone. I previously noted how the Washington Post also has failed to correct openly false accounts of cases.  Not only is there no apparent inclination to be accurate but even less expectation to do so.

via jonathanturley.org

Say It Ain’t So, Joe: CBS Reporter Draws Ire Of Biden For Asking Substantive Question – JONATHAN TURLEY

We have been discussing the embarrassing failure of the media to ask President-elect Joe Biden any difficult questions throughout the campaign and creating a type of protective journalistic cocoon around him.  That pattern has continued after the election with pre-selected reporters asking laughingly soft ball questions to Biden while continuing a virtual blackout on such stories as the Hunter Biden influence peddling controversy. Then something bizarre happened yesterday. A reporter actually asked Biden a real question. CBS News reporter Bo Erickson asked Biden about whether he would support the CDC rather than the teacher’s union on closing schools. Biden’s response was a personal attack on the reporter. This is simply not done and will not be tolerated. After all, think of the chaos: the entire press corps would be expected to ask questions and Biden would be expected to answer them.

via jonathanturley.org

Revenge of the Republicans | Spectator USA

As Biden’s razor-thin win in a handful of states that pushed him past the 270-electoral vote threshold needed to win the presidency, Trump and his allies claimed that voter fraud and other Democrat-led schemes stole the election. Unlike the bogus Russia bunk, however, there are documented voter fraud issues and other unexplained results that call into question the election. For example, one analysis found that Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major city except, conveniently, Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. Because of this and other election oddities, a significant chunk of voters don’t believe Biden actually won the election. He’ll now spend four years governing an America in which just under half of its citizens believe he wouldn’t have won had everything been done fairly and squarely.

Though he managed to get far more done than people give his team credit for, Trump governed under a dark cloud for most of his presidency. His team had to waste precious time and energy defending him against the Mueller investigation with its phalanx of Democratic hitman lawyers and corrupt FBI personnel. The media aided this assault by running stories over the last four years based on anonymous sources, several of which ended up being false. No president has had to undergo so thorough an investigation on such thinly-sourced claims. Trump may be lots of things, but he is as patriotic and faithful to America as any man who ever occupied the Oval Office.

via spectator.us

Here's how Trump wins: Take fight to House where rules favor GOP

His argument is fairly simple: Congress votes to ratify state electoral votes, and this year, it should throw out those from states where the vote count is in question. The result would be that neither Trump nor Joe Biden would have enough to win, leaving it to the House to pick the president.

In that vote, the Constitution stipulates that each state gets just one vote, and since 26 House delegations are majority-Republican, “House Republicans control the election of the next president of the United States," Brooks said.

There is one hang-up that the courts will have to settle first, however.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Waiting for Sidney - American Greatness

I really do not know what is going to happen. The clock is ticking, loudly. Sometimes it seems that Trump would need a miracle akin to the “miracle of the lightning” or the “miracle of the rain” that saved Marcus Aurelius and his generals in their battles against revolting German tribes in the early 170s AD. In one case, a Roman army was besieged by the Iazyges when a bolt of lightning destroyed the Iazyges’ siege works and the Romans rallied. In the other, the Romans were surrounded by the Quadi and cut off from fresh water. In the dreadful summer heat, they were about to succumb when the heavens opened and a downpour snatched them from ignominious defeat. Those dei ex machina were stunning, unpredictable, salvific. 

Can Donald Trump count on something similar? No. Could it nonetheless happen? You betcha.  

via amgreatness.com

Sometimes miracles don't happen.

Here's how salary corresponds to penis size: study

To determine whether penis proportions correspond to paycheck size, the e-commerce site recruited 997 men to answer questions about work, salary and the dimensions of their manhood, the Sun reported. What better way to celebrate International Men’s Day, right?

The saucy study found that men with units measuring 7 and 8 inches earned an average of about $35,700 and $50,300 per year.

Meanwhile, men packing 3-inch penises — the threshold for a micropenis — made an annual income of about $76,780 on average. Not only that, but males with 4-inch penises were far more likely to get promoted, per the survey.

via nypost.com

Ha!

Some Catholic leaders worried about Joe Biden's policies

Some Roman Catholic leaders are worried that President-elect Joe Biden will support policies, including abortion rights, that go against the church’s teachings.

Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told his colleagues on Tuesday the church could face a “difficult and complex situation” over positions touted by Biden, who is set to become the second Catholic president after John F. Kennedy.

“The president-elect has given us reason to think he will support some good policies” but also some that “undermine our preeminent priority of the elimination of abortion,” Gomez said.

“These policies pose a serious threat to the common good,” he continued.

via nypost.com

I'm His Excellency has gotten a clue.

(35) Sidney Powell: It will be BIBLICAL - YouTube

Frontline member of the Trump legal team Sidney Powell comments exclusively on the claims that are going to be made in the legal battle to come over the presidential election results. - with political analyst Mark Halperin and Newsmax TV's Rob Schmitt

via www.youtube.com

Sidney Powell with very sympathetic interviewers.

DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT, INC., et KATHY BOOCKVAR, et al., Defendants.

In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs (collectively, the “Plaintiffs”) seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all corners – from Greene County to Pike County, and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens. That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant Defendants’ motions and dismiss Plaintiffs’ action with prejudice.

Paragraph breaks and footnotes removed.

Well, this is the sort of thing I would expect a federal judge to say if he were confronted with a pleading that rested upon a conspiracy theory rather than an actual massive plot to undermine a national election. It also seems like a desperate measure by the Trump team. I'm not a litigator, but I suspect we'll start to get excuses from the plaintiffs for why they don't have the evidence rather than the evidence itself. But we'll see.

11/20/2020 - Sidney Powell dropped bombs on Howie Carr show - Alpha Agencies will in for surprise!

via www.youtube.com

If I had to bet, I would bet that Ms. Powell has just lost her mind, a little bit. But, and this is what makes me so mad, this is NEWS and should not be suppressed, as it is being. I think she's making stuff up but does not know she's making it up. I speculate. We'll know by the end of next week. If we get increasingly elaborate excuses, well, that tells you something. Now the CIA is involved, she says. Well, maybe the CIA was involved. OTOH, could be she has not been taking her meds. But look, it is possible the CIA *is* involved and surely we owe it to ourselves to find out if we can what the heck is going on here.

Sidney Powell: Some 'May Need Witness Protection' After Our Exposé

"This was very widespread, very deliberate, well-funded and everybody and their pet rock is trying to stop me from exposing it," the attorney said. 

via townhall.com

If this turns out to be a hoaz, I'm going to lose my respect entirely for Sidney Powell.

No, The Army Didn't Seize Server Showing Trump Election Landslide - The New York Times

Allies of President Trump are spreading another baseless rumor about computer-based vote manipulation, days after they gained attention for falsely claiming that a widely used piece of election administration software had been used to delete votes for the president.

The newest conspiracy theory involves Scytl, a software company in Barcelona, Spain, that makes software for local election officials.

The false theory alleges that the U.S. Army recently raided Scytl's office in Frankfurt and seized a computer server containing authentic vote totals for the 2020 election. This “undoctored” data, the theory claims, shows that Mr. Trump was not defeated but instead won in a landslide with 410 electoral votes.

Both Scytl and the Army have refuted the claim. An Army spokesperson told The Associated Press that there had been no raid on Scytl’s offices and no servers seized. In a fact-check posted to its website, Scytl said it did not “tabulate, tally or count votes” in U.S. elections or have an office in Frankfurt.

via www.nytimes.com

It's a sad day when the NY Times gets its facts right by checking the sources. What has got into them? Of course, unless they're lying. Or unless some dark actors in the background are deliberately sowing disinformation. We'll probably see more of this going forward. I just don't want anybody telling me I fell for a conspiracy theory. Just tyring to be open minded.

Liz Cheney to Trump: If you have proof of a massive election conspiracy, we need to see it right now

The claim is that they GOP has been denied control of the executive branch via a criminal plot by Democrats disenfranchising millions of American voters, an out-and-out coup, and … they’re cool as cucumbers about it. No rush with the evidence, Sidney. Take as much time as you need to destroy public confidence in U.S. elections. There’s not a single Republican anywhere in the legislative branch who seems visibly outraged by what Powell is alleging despite the sensational scale of it, up to and including normally excitable Trump lackeys in the House. Normally these guys are willing to grandstand angrily if a Democrat somewhere so much as farts.

via hotair.com

And the rest of us are left wondering just what is going on. If it is that they're just so used to wild claims coming out the WH, well, that's sad.

Perils of Trump’s Conspiracy-Mongering About the Election – Reason.com

Donald Trump and his lawyers (led by Rudy Giuliani) are promoting far-fetched conspiracy theories about supposed voter fraud in the presidential election. They claim large-scale voter fraud instigated by a massive international cabal including Democratic Party leaders, tech companies, George Soros, and even Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013). State and federal courts have almost uniformly rejected Trump's and the GOP's claims; their few wins are on matters unrelated to voter fraud, and have no chance of shifting enough votes to change the outcome of the election. As co-blogger Keith Whittington explains, Trump's efforts to get GOP-controlled state legislators to appoint pro-Trump electors in states where Joe Biden won the popular vote are also nearly certain to fail.

via reason.com