RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/election-day-draws-near-and-dice-are-rolling-bruce-thornton/

In a week America goes to the polls, and by normal standards Donald Trump should be reelected, whether in a squeaker like 1968, when Richard Nixon won by half a million votes; or a landslide like 1972, when he beat left-leaning George McGovern by 18 million votes and won every state except Massachusetts.  

But these are not normal times. Addled by the Trump-hatred virus, the Dems have been taken over by its progressive-socialist wing, a possibility that at the beginning of the year during the primaries had spooked the Democrat establishment as it had in the 2016 election when it undermined Bernie Sanders. They knew that such a leftward lurch goes before an electoral fall. Now it seems they’ve put all their chips on an old white guy with little to show for nearly half a century in “public service” other than a family with more money than his Senate salary can possibly account for.

Perhaps the Pelosi-Schumer axis thinks that if Biden’s elected they can control Joe and their Sandernista base, and tone down its left-wing utopian wish-list of the Green New Deal, free college tuition for all, the elimination of carbon-based energy, punitive tax-rates, a return to a foreign policy of appeasement, an increased government role in health care, and policies like reparations and “police reform” based on preposterous, racialist ideas like “systemic racism” and “implicit bias.” Most average Democrats would be content just to return to the Obama days of redistribution at home, and retreat abroad.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coping-with-the-covid-winter-11603840305?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Perhaps you’ve heard winter is coming. Or as Joe Biden warned last week about a third virus wave, “We’re about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter.” He’s playing up the worst case as the election nears, so some context is in order.

Virus cases are increasing, but this is inevitable as cooler weather arrives and Americans go indoors. Cases have also been climbing across Europe, in some countries more than in the U.S. But the good news is that America is better prepared to handle another virus surge, and progress toward a vaccine continues.***

The seven-day U.S. rolling case average has nearly doubled from the recent low in mid-September. Cases are more geographically dispersed than in the spring and summer, rising even in states with strict restrictions and mask mandates. This includes New York and its neighbors whose governors were hailed for supposedly controlling the virus. The increase has been most acute in upper Midwest states that weren’t hit as hard earlier. Some of the increase is due to more testing, which is detecting more asymptomatic cases.

Most concerning are hospitalizations, which are up by about 40% since mid-September though are still 30% or so below spring and summer peaks. Most hospitals have ample capacity to treat virus patients while continuing elective procedures, which were stopped during the spring. Covid patients occupy 13% of hospital beds in Wisconsin, 15% in South Dakota and 15% in North Dakota. According to North Dakota’s virus data dashboard, 45% of non-ICU hospital patients classified “with Covid” are admitted for other reasons and test positive for the virus.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-ballot-wisdom-11603840218?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The campaign to stigmatize the Supreme Court is already under way, even before new Justice Amy Coney Barrett hears a case. Witness the media hyperventilating after the Justices ruled 5-3 late Monday that Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 ballot deadline must remain in place.

The order sustained an appellate-court ruling that had halted a federal judge’s intrusion saying ballots mailed on time could be counted even if they arrived six days late. The judge claimed Covid-19 as the excuse, but Badger State law says absentee ballots must arrive by Election Day.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh wrote opinions that should help educate lower-court judges who think they can rewrite state election law on election eve. Justice Kavanaugh cited the Court’s precedents that “recognize a basic tenet of election law: When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road should be clear and settled.”

Justice Gorsuch added that Wisconsin has gone to extraordinary lengths to take account of Covid, including sending all registered voters an absentee-ballot application and return envelope in the summer that they have been able to return since September

If Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 deadline can be thrown out due to Covid and despite the many avenues for casting a vote, Justice Gorsuch wrote, then “what about the identical deadlines in 30 other States?” Why bump the deadline six days and not 10 days? Other judges, he continued, might well “unfurl the precinct maps and decide whether States should add polling places, revise their hours, rearrange the voting booths,” and so forth.

https://acdemocracy.org/america-on-the-precipice-november-7-2020/

Is the United States prepared for the aftermath of the upcoming Presidential election? Imagine this scenario, bearing in mind that all of its elements are eminently plausible.

On the morning of November 5, 2020, the election results are inconclusive, and neither candidate has conceded. Remarkably, most public polling over the past six months failed to predict this outcome. Either a large number of voters kept their preference to themselves or lied to the pollsters.

Substantiated reports of errors and blunders in tallying ballots and evidence of widespread mail-in voters’ fraud, lead both parties to challenge the results before the Supreme Court, which invalidates the election. A new election day has yet to be announced.

Conflicting disinformation campaigns flood traditional and social media, most of which are controlled by the Left. They are spreading falsehoods and fake news, including disinformation spawned by U.S. enemies, to further confuse and incite large segments of the population, especially the young. Real and fake images of clashes between law enforcement and rioters increase racial tension, goading the public into arming themselves against the police and causing more violent outbursts.