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November 2020

Now, Vienna If Western Europe is to survive . . Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/now-vienna-bruce-bawer/

Although I’ve lived in Europe since 1998 and traveled widely on the continent ever since, I’d never set foot in Austria until November of two years ago, when I spent a few days in Vienna. I enjoyed the visit so much that I went back in September of last year. I’d hoped to make these visits an annual practice, but the pandemic got in the way.

Meanwhile, I found myself writing a great deal about the U.S. presidential campaign, which shifted my focus away from my longtime principal topic, Islam in Europe. Also contributing to this shift was the fact that terrorism in Europe went through something of a lull. Yes, there were those horrible beheadings in France, which I wrote about. But for the most part I was preoccupied with Trump vs. Biden.

Then, on Monday evening, in an effort to clear my mind of all thoughts about the election, I sat down with my partner to re-watch The Americans, the best drama series in the history of American television. While we were watching it, he said that something had happened in Vienna. I replied that he must have misunderstood: nothing in the entire series has ever had anything to do with Vienna. He said no, he was talking about the real world. I looked over to see that he’d been checking the news on his phone.

Vienna! Multiple shooters, it was reported, had opened fire at several locations in the city center. Latest reports from the BBC indicate that two men and two women were killed and twenty-two more wounded, most of them apparently shot outside of bars and restaurants.

The left’s attempt to steal the election… just another night in the deep state By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/the_lefts_attempt_to_steal_the_election_just_another_night_in_the_deep_state.html

The American left never for one moment accepted their loss in 2016.  They were shocked, enraged, apoplectic that Hillary Clinton, one of the most corrupt candidates in US history, failed to extend their hold on the Marxist project to remake America in their Alinskyite/Stalinist vision.  

It’s been a long-view enterprise that began with the racist Woodrow Wilson, but took off in earnest when the radical leftists of the 1960s took over academia.  They’ve won.  Two generations of American students have been purposefully miseducated to believe America is irredeemably racist, that the capitalism that has enabled the US to become the most successful nation on the planet is evil, that socialism is better.  

All these years later, the dream of MLK that character counted more than skin color has been blown into a million tiny pieces by the left’s dedication to identity politics.  For the left, all Americans, for that matter all humans, are to be defined by their victim group – race and gender.  All minorities, all women, all gay and trans persons are victims.  Victims of whom and what?  White supremacy, specifically white males.  Asians and Jews are exempt from the victim category because they succeed at greater rates than the rest of us; they must be discriminated against by the social justice warriors. And they are.

The election of Donald Trump, particularly on the heels of the failed Obama administration, was a bridge too far for the intolerant, elitist left.  How could this old white man have beaten their oh-so-overrated Hillary?  He won because a majority of Americans were and remain sick to death of the coastal elites’ contempt for them.  They were and remain sick to death of their constant drive to remake society into their dreamscape of a tiered society, rather like India’s caste system, that categorizes people by not by class but by victim status.  

The Fight is Now

https://americanmind.org/post/the-fight-is-now/

A Statement from The American Mind.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, breaking every rule that Democrats have screamed for months that President Trump was going to break, have all but declared themselves the winners of the 2020 election before the votes are counted.

But the 2020 election is not over. The fight has just begun. This is the moment that decides everything. Everything is now at stake. Republicans must rise to the occasion. This means rallies and protests as well as investigating and ensuring that this election was lawful.

Bring Out the Lawyers

The results last night revealed conclusively that our supposed experts lied to the nation throughout 2020’s election season with deceptive polls, statistics, and percentages about Trump’s chances. This is no surprise—we already know our ruling class has lied non-stop to the American people about President Trump for four years.

Now we are asked to simply trust corrupt Democratic political machines in one-party cities to count the vote honestly. We will not. Instead, Republicans must aggressively investigate and prosecute any and all wrongdoing in the attempt to steal this election.

The reason the Democratic Party just broke all the norms related to voting in America is because they are trying to fend off a loss. They hastily changed the rules midstream by means of hundreds of lawsuits, using COVID as an excuse, and a stream of stories of troubling irregularities is now flowing out of the remaining disputed states. The question upon which everything now depends is whether or not Republicans are willing to stop them.

The American people, no less than the Republican Party and their lawyers, must demand transparency and accountability about what happened last night and what is now happening over the course of the ongoing count.

Game-On for the Coup? It will all go according to plan—unless we stop it. By Michael Anton

https://americanmind.org/post/game-on-for-the-coup/

It will all go according to plan—unless we stop it.

Strictly speaking, a coup is an illegitimate change of government by violent means. But what if you can do it without violence? To win without fighting is best, Sun Tzu says. An ostensibly (“mostly”) peaceful ouster from power is preferable to the use of force because it can much more easily be sold as “our democracy” at work.

National polls consistently predicted a huge Biden blowout. That they were wrong (again) is demonstrated by the facts that (a) the 2020 popular vote is, so far (California is not fully counted), a mere two-point spread, hardly a blowout; (b) Trump got a higher share of the vote than last time; and (C) Trump received far more total votes than last time.

But it’s the swing states that matter. Here (again) Trump was supposed to lose—if not necessarily bigly in every case, at least widely.

But throughout the day, the president consistently outperformed the polls. He crushed his 2016 performance in Florida. He also outperformed in Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas. Senators he was supposed to drag down with him, including Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell, won handily. Even Susan Collins, who was supposed to be sure goner and lose by at least three, won by nine. A party that was “certain” to lose the Senate has kept it and gained (so far) six seats in the House.

Looking at states no one expected Trump to lose, his overperformance is even more stark. The polling average for West Virginia was Trump +17; he won it by 39. Kansas was estimated at +9; the result was +15.

Throughout the day the president was also outperforming his expected result in key states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He even, for a time, looked like he was within striking distance in Virginia, a state Hillary Clinton won by five points in 2016. At one point the New York Times’s “meter” had Trump’s chances in North Carolina at 92%. The needle was also sliding in the president’s direction in Arizona and Georgia, among others.

Defiant President Will the election end up in the Supreme Court? Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/defiant-president-joseph-klein/

Election Day 2020 finally arrived. Anxiety across the country has reached a fever pitch about an election that may go down as the most divisive one since 1864, which was held during the midst of the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln ended up winning that election handily. But the 2020 election has turned out to be much closer than pundits in the media and pollsters predicted, despite a widening gender gap and the movement of suburban voters into the Democratic camp. The tidal wave for Biden that Democrats were hoping for did not materialize. Polls in some key states such as Florida turned out to be way off base.

This race has seen a record numbers of mail-in ballots cast, which will be counted under a hodgepodge of rules that vary from state to state. The mail-in votes skewed heavily in favor of Biden in key battleground states in the early tallies, but Trump managed to close the gap with the votes from his supporters cast in person on Election Day. With teams of lawyers from both sides out in force planning to litigate close vote counts, it could be days or even weeks before we know for sure whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will finally prevail.

In addition to trying to hold onto the White House, Republicans have the task of defending 23 seats in the Senate. As of early Wednesday morning, the Republicans took the contested Alabama Senate seat back from the Democrats, as former college football coach Tommy Tuberville defeated Democratic Senator Doug Jones. The Democrats in turn flipped the contested Senate Arizona seat, as Mark Kelly defeated the incumbent Senator Martha McSally who nevertheless has refused to concede. It looks like the Senate seats currently held by Susan Collins in Maine and Thom Tillis in North Carolina will remain Republican, although these races have not been officially called as of early Wednesday morning. If the Republicans manage to hold onto these seats, they will be able to retain control of the Senate. Meanwhile, the House is projected to remain in control of the Democrats.

The Election – and the Wait Not daring to breathe… in case it jinxes the swing states yet to call. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/election-and-wait-katie-hopkins/

This the hard bit—the wait.

Sometimes I think I can hear my friends across the pond holding their breath, collectively, not daring to breathe or move or eat in case it somehow jinxes the swing states yet to call.

I dare not text anyone, because I just don’t see how words are going to help right now. Only a win will make this stop.

Trump has called it already. The President of Slovenia has even sent his congratulations, and yet the noise from my radio and TV tells me that the media are launching an all-out assault to ensure the win is not given.

I cannot tell you how many times our State Broadcaster (the BBC) has “plotted the Biden path to victory” on the irritating tech toy they insist on using, but it is countless, as if by plotting his path to a win they can make viewers believe it so —and bring down the will of the American people.

And when my children ask me “Who won?” I can’t bring myself to say it is undecided. Or to report that it is “too close to call” or “all the votes haven’t been counted yet.” None of that rings true to me. I think of all the faces I have met at Trump rallies and Republican events over the last few months, and I know they are the truth of America.

Mad About Election Chaos? Blame Dems’ Fraud-Prone Vote-By-Mail Scheme

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/11/05/mad-about-2020-election-chaos-blame-dems-fraud-prone-vote-by-mail-scheme/

s many feared, the election has ended, but it isn’t over. Ballots are still being tallied, and races in Nevada and Pennsylvania remain up in the air. Even when finished, there will be angry disputes. The counts will go on, but even when done they’ll be litigated for months. Blame the Democrats’ vote-by-mail scheme for the election chaos.

Fed up with riots, demonstrations, nonstop name-calling and demonization of political opponents, Americans speak longingly of a clear result to our elections that would let us all get on with our lives.

It wasn’t to be in 2020. Costly, and no doubt lengthy, legal challenges await. It may yet even be discovered that there was massive electoral fraud.

For this, you can thank mail-in voting, which the Democrats pushed as part of their “make every vote count” campaign (not to mention, of course, the four-year hate-affair the unhinged left in the Democratic Party conducted with President Donald Trump).

As has been noted repeatedly, expanding mail-in voting under the pretense of making voting easier during the lockdown was always spurious. We saw just how deceitful that was this week when the Centers for Disease Control told those with COVID-19 to go ahead and vote in person – just be careful.

So much for: “We have to vote by mail to keep people safe.”

Of course, voting by mail is fraught with potential for fraud, something that has been demonstrated by numerous studies.

How big is the problem? The federal Election Assistance Commission found that, between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million mail-in ballots went unaccounted for. That’s equal to missing roughly 20% of “all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states that do elections exclusively by mail,” a recent Real Clear Politics piece noted.

If a Won Election Is Not Reported, Is It a Won Election? By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/11/04/did-the-tree-fall-trump-wonbut-n1125734

Everyone knows the old teaser: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer turns on the concept of “sound.” There will be sound waves, of course, but “sound” depends on the human ear registering and interpreting the kinetic energy released by the falling tree. So, no, it doesn’t make a “sound”—and if one is not present, or is not paying attention or is distracted by other considerations, one will not know whether the tree has fallen or not. But if one takes a walk through the forest, one may note the fallen tree and arrive at the proper conclusion. It fell, sound or no sound.

The analogy with the current electoral muddle is obvious. Everyone knows that Donald Trump has won the 2020 election. Everyone knows that electoral tampering has been massive and ubiquitous, and that a fair vote would have borne landslide numbers for the president. Everyone knows that ballot harvesting, mail-in voting, and extended vote tallying for an indefinite period after the polls close, when new ballots are miraculously found and illegible or absent postmarks are ignored, is the broad, well-trodden path to electoral fraud. And everyone knows that the fix was in from the start. 

Suddenly, all the Democrat-run swing states need to stop counting ballots for awhile By Monica Showalter

/11/suddenly_all_the_democratrun_swing_states_need_to_stop_counting_ballots_for_awhile.html

Is the U.S. on track to see its first election utterly stolen in front of its eyes? The way Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez used to do it in the face of huge, huge enthusiastic crowds protesting against him back in Caracas? 

How else to explain strange doings like these?

Michigan, too, needs some extra time to count the ballots. And so does North Carolina. And so do all of the states where Trump was running ahead — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan… The counting suddenly shut down. Arizona went down a suspicious 90 minutes before the announcement that the state had flipped to Biden.

Mark Steyn has some brutal observations here, emphasis mine.

2.40am The President entered to the familiar strains of “Hail to the Chief”, which seemed very consciously chosen. His remarks were brief, but this line struck me:

I said, ‘What happened to the election?’ ‘It’s off…’ All of a sudden everything just stopped.

Indeed. The election special mysteriously ground to a halt. Trump could reasonably have expected to be giving his victory speech right now, had not Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina all decided to have an early night and resume in the morning, or afternoon, or next Tuesday.

There is great peril in that.

US Formally Exits Paris Accord, a Global Pact Aiming at Climate Change

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-formally-exits-paris-accord-a-global-pact-aiming-at-climate-change_3565268.html

BERLIN—The United States on Wednesday formally left the Paris Agreement, fulfilling an old promise by President Donald Trump. The global pact was forged five years ago aimed at curbing the potential threat of climate change.

The move, announced by President Donald Trump and triggered by his administration a year ago, has no immediate impact on international efforts to curb the threat.

There are 189 countries that remain committed to the 2015 Paris accord, which aims to keep the increase in average temperatures worldwide below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), ideally no more than 1.5C (2.7 F).

Many scientists claim that any rise beyond 2 degrees Celsius could have a devastating impact on large parts of the world, raising sea levels, stoking tropical storms, and worsening droughts and floods.

The Paris accord requires countries to set their own voluntary targets for reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The only binding requirement is that nations have to accurately report on their efforts.

The United States and China are the world’s largest emitters of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and its contribution to cutting emissions is seen as important, but it is not alone in the effort.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said he favors signing the United States back up to the Paris accord if he turns out the winner for the 2020 presidential election