The Joke? It's W.E.C.

The joke's on you, voters!!  And it's called the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Example #4,285:

A lawsuit filed last week by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty alleges the members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission have been derelict in their duties to decide complaints against local election officials.

The lawsuit, filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court on behalf of registered voter Robert Pellegrini of Hartland, charges that the six-member commission has “delegated their authority to WEC’s Administrator, or in some cases to its Chairperson, who makes those decisions instead of the WEC Commissioners.”...

Making up the rules as you go is not Good Policy.  But WEC is famous for that; see, e.g., "ballot drop-boxes".

Vos has a chance to simply de-fund this joke-with-nice-offices.

He should take it.

Curious Affinity: FTX and Covid

Jeffrey Tucker highlights the rather startling spending that FTX (Schmuel Bankman-Fried) did on "pandemics."

He funded a bogus "study" which knocked Ivermectin.

His brother ran an outfit, Guarding Against Pandemics, which spent $70 million on all sorts of ventures 'to improve biosecurity.'  They also spent heavily on ads pushing for Biden's request for $30BN for 'pandemic' prevention or sumpin' sumpin.

Tucker summarized FTX:

...This is all a racket. FTX, founded in 2019 following Biden’s announcement of his bid for the presidency, by the son of the co-founder of a major Democrat Party political action committee called Mind the Gap, was nothing but a magic-bean Ponzi scheme. It seized on the lockdowns for political, media, and academic cover. Its economic rationale was as nonexistent as its books....

By now, dear reader, you were almost expecting this:

 ...FTX had a close relationship with the World Economic Forum and was the favored crypto exchange of the Ukrainian government. It looks for all the world like the money-laundering operation of the Democratic National Committee and the entire lockdown lobby. ...

Such a smart boy he is!!  So successful, my grandson Schmuel!!

Tom Brady will have to spend another 5 years in the league to make up the losses he took here.

Paul Ryan Asserts Control (!!)

Sundance is very pleased that Ryan sets himself up as Ticket-Taker for actual Republicans.

He also notes that Ryan talks about "winning":

...Keep in mind, as Paul Ryan talks about winning elections he recently campaigned for Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in their failed 2020 midterm reelection campaigns....

And this:

 ...Paul Ryan as a candidate for Vice-President in 2012 received less votes in his own state of Wisconsin than candidate Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020....

Having run away from Janesville because it is NOT New York, Ryan is now comfy with the idea that he will be the king-maker in the Party.

Or so he thinks.

Bluto Barr's Speaking Tour

Any sentient Conservative, even without MAGA influence, knows that Bill "Bluto" Barr is a very shifty Deep State/Establishment character.  His M.O. has always been 'what's good for Bill' and any job or position he's taken or held has been carefully selected with that end in mind.

Now he's running around the country peddling his (overpriced) book, and he's made a stop in Madison to speak to a group of folks.....some of which may not know better.....but organized by people sympathetic to the wrong cause.

But that's just my Conservative take.  What does the Left think?

...But even by his own standards, Bill Barr’s latest book is an exercise in just goin’ for it. Amazon’s blurb for “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General” promises a “vivid, forthright” comparison of his first, normal stint in the executive branch, where he came in at the end to help sweep the Iran-Contra affair under the rug, to his second, when he helped hide the president’s attempted extortion of a foreign government.

Apparently Barr’s “second tenure under President Donald Trump [was] a deliberate and difficult choice.” Cue the world’s tiniest violins. But at least he got to lock up a whole bunch of Black and brown people both times, right?

Lest we forget, Bill Barr presided over an absolute orgy of inappropriate interference with the supposedly independent Justice Department. From the mash note cum job application he sent to Trump in June of 2018, expounding on his theories unlimited presidential power and crapping on the Mueller investigation, to his obsequious resignation letter in December of 2020, offered up as a bribe to get him out the door without being fired via tweet, Barr never failed to put his own political interests first.

Before the Mueller Report was even released, Barr famously hopped in front of a microphone to announce that the it had fully exonerated the president. In reality Mueller laid out multiple counts of obstruction of justice, before concluding that only congress had the right to try a sitting executive. Barr then proceeded to blow up the prosecution of Michael Flynn and undercut line prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone. And for good measure, he tried to Saturday Night Massacre the SDNY in an apparent attempt to protect Rudy Giuliani....

One does not have to agree with the assertions made above to agree with the red-highlighted one:  Barr is a slippery character.  It should NEVER be forgotten that Barr jumped right in to defend an FBI agent who shot dead a mother holding her infant in cold blood; and Barr defended that action on the basis that the agent was 'just following orders.'

In other words, Barr was defending the Deep State.

Barr's final refuge is using his Catholicism to rebuild his reputation.  Barr should consider going on an extended retreat, or joining a monastery instead.

Maricopa Is NOT Resolved and Water's Boiling There, UPDATED

You can listen to this podcast and learn.

Maricopa's "election" was pure chaos, and Kari Lake--with Cleta Mitchell and Harmeet Dhillon--will be making loud noises about it next week.  This will be a Federal case.

 ...Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has insisted she'll still become governor after the state's assistant attorney general demanded explanations to polling day issues before agreeing to certify Lake's Democrat rival's win.

GOP rising star Lake spoke exclusively to DailyMail.com Saturday  after her campaign was handed a lifeline on Saturday when the state's attorney general's office demanded explanations for a string of election day problems before the final results can be certified.

Lake told DailyMail.com it vindicated her decision to fight on, even though the Associated Press and other news organizations called the race for her opponent....

Seven percent of the voters in Maricopa were DENIED ACCESS to voting by virtue of the failing machines.  Seven percent of Maricopa's votes would mean that Lake, Finchem, Hamadeh, and Masters would have won.

...According to reports from Kari Lake’s side, 48% of the machines in Maricopa, not 20%, malfunctioned.

There were allegedly no issues with the same machines during early voting. That raises some questions since everyone knows the Republicans planned to vote in person,...

Just for fun:  did you know that Maricopa's election machines had been recalled by their Japanese manufacturer--and that Maricopa County didn't bother to follow the recall instructions?  This is not a matter of "who won."  This is a matter of total election integrity, something that Hillary Clinton used to be enraged about.  Did you know that Cochise County may not certify its votes, either?

UPDATE:

Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright — with the Elections Integrity Unit — wrote a letter to the Maricopa County officials Saturday demanding an accounting for the widespread ballot tabulation and ballot printer problems seen during the general election on Nov. 8.

Among the most troubling issues raised in the letter directed to Thomas Liddy with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office was the apparent co-mingling of ballots in black duffle bags in at least one polling location, which were successfully run through the on-site tabulators with those put in “Door 3” to be sent to the Election Department’s downtown Phoenix tabulation center because they could not be read....

The letter also mentions a few other specific violations of AZ election law.

Where is "Speaker-in-Waiting" McCarthy?

For that matter, where is Sen. Sinema, the "great moderate"?

The Heresy of "Reparations" and "Progress"

Here's an essay which clarifies the matter of "reparations".  In short, it's an ancient heresy.

Excerpts:

...Racism is a sin. Like every sin, it leaves consequences. “I am sorry I stole your money” does not change the objective reality that a person’s money was unjustly taken. That’s why, in addition to the thief’s sorrow, the thief needs to give the money back to his victim.  

But maybe the theft occurred years ago. Maybe the thief does not even know from whom he stole. Perhaps the thief is even dead. Would one contend his friends, whether or not they knew he was a thief, are bound to make amends in his name?

This is the problem of sin writ large: man can do it, but he can’t undo it.  ...

... That is why Christianity recognizes man needs a Redeemer and that what Christ did vis-à-vis evil could not be done by any other man. An ancient heresy, Pelagianism, claimed he could: sin was merely bad example, and man can lift himself by his moral bootstraps....

That's the heresy behind "reparations"--and for that matter, the idea that mankind can 'morally improve itself' because ........... the Majik of Progress!!!

Let's make a distinction here:  some reparations may be made.  A thief may be able to return the property.  A fraudster may be able to return the proceeds of his fraud.  But a murderer's harm cannot be un-done, any more than slavery's.

 ...A secular society, devoid of a transcendental horizon, consigning sin to the “unknowable theological,” and having imbibed a Rousseauean confidence in inevitable human “progress,” is essentially Pelagian. It believes the myth that it can repair evil and, by following that myth, arguably launches its own vicious cycle of injury. Woke cancellation and historical revisionism are Promethean ploys to undo what was....

One is left with the duty to perform the works of mercy.  Best get to it!

 

Live Nation Under Investigation

It seems that the Feds are taking a hard look at Live Nation.

 ...“Members of the antitrust division’s staff at the Justice Department have in recent months contacted music venues and players in the ticket market, asking about Live Nation’s practices and the wider dynamics of the industry, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is sensitive. The inquiry appears to be broad, looking at whether the company maintains a monopoly over the industry, one of the people said. . . .

Perhaps the City of Milwaukee should pause its love-fest for FPC/Live Nation.

Italy Moves on Ukro-Nazis

News you won't find in the litterbox liners....

...Italian police announced a series of raids against the neo-Nazi Order of Hagal organization. Accused of stockpiling weapons and planning terror attacks, the group has established operational ties to the Ukrainian Azov Battalion.

Five members of an Italian neo-Nazi organization known as the “Order of Hagal” were arrested on November 15th while an additional member remains wanted by authorities. He happened to be in Ukraine, fighting Russian forces alongside the Azov Battalion, which has been formally integrated into the Ukrainian military. 

The “Hagal” members are accused of plotting terrorist attacks on civilian and police targets....

The Azov Battalion is a group of neo-Nazis which has been heavily involved in terrorizing and murdering Russophiles in the eastern portion of Ukraine for a decade or more.  As to Hagal, it's likely that their animus toward Italy has to do with the election of Giorgia Meloni.

HT:  Meaning

Cahaly 'Splains the Polling Problem

Trafalgar was THE accurate poll in '16.  Same with '20--although there was this 'election fraud' thing which he didn't factor into the equasion.

His polling was off this year, too.  How does he explain it?

Q)  This obviously is not an exact science, all this stuff. It seems like something where you need to keep adjusting all the time.

 
That’s not the weakness, though. The weakness was our turnout model. You have your methodology, to collect and process your samples, and then you have the turnout, your model of who’s going to vote. The two halves of the sandwich.

So our methodology will not change, and we’ll adjust our turnout model. Like I said, the two sides to the sandwich. You don’t throw out the top side that hasn’t really had a problem, you throw out the bottom side. Because when you look at some of the places that did have the expected turnout, they weren’t that off. When you look at places that did not have the expected turnout, they were very off. So we’ve got to adjust that....

He didn't say "Dane County" but that's exactly what he meant.

The (D) "turnout" in Dane County wasn't really hard to figure out:  Democrat operatives hit every.  single.  student.  at UW-Madison.  Every damned one.  And--as you might guess--every damned one of them "voted" Democrat.  (In reality, as Treehouse points out, every one of them balloted Democrat.)

Between the children, the bureaucrats, and the feckless drifters who never left college (and are now well into their 60's), those operatives had a gold mine.

Ninety percent!

WaPo Names Our "Ruler"

In another sodden drivel-piece, the Washington Post blubbers about Michele O's choice of hair style.

Never mind that; what really glows bright red in this blather is Robert Spencer's grasp of D.C. people:

...The American people, Mrs. Obama said, "were 'just getting adjusted' to having a Black president in the Oval Office and a Black family in the White House, so she decided to keep her hair straight." This was not her actual preference; it was a concession to the limitations of the benighted Americans over whom Barack was ruling...

RULING?

RULING????

Yes.  That's what the sleaze in D.C. thinks goes on over there.  Spencer phrased it accurately.

Congress and the Exec Offices DO think that they "rule."

So did George III, as you may recall. 

 

Handling the (Stupid) Press

 

Two Moms and Their Sons

Certain mothers are incapable of rational thinking.  They raised their sons in an irrational environment and look what we got.

There's Dawn Woods, mother of Darrell Brooks (who will die in Waupun).

...FOX6's Mary Stoker Smith: "Do you think he knew what he was doing driving through that parade route?"

"I don’t think … I don’t even … I don’t believe from what I’ve known and seen that Darrell was even in his right mind, that Darrell was even conscious of what he was doing because I don’t, whenever he goes into that explosiveness, he can’t stop," said Woods. "He can’t control. He doesn't even know what he’s doing."...

Woods:  'Whatever we do, do NOT blame the perpetrator'.

Then there's Sam Bankman-Fried's mom!

... Why exactly are we trying so hard to make the world safe for blame? What have we gained and what have we lost in the effort? And is there an alternative?...

Fried:  'Let's dump "blame" altogether!!'

In both cases, way too much "Mommy".  

In both cases, there were consequences.

Trump Is Wrong--on THIS Issue

We think highly of Rick Grenell.  But he and Trump are both wrong on this matter.

...On Thursday, Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas called for ousting Romney from the Senate in 2024, specifically citing the RMA vote among the reasons why.

In response, former Trump administration intelligence chief and Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell (who is homosexual) noted that same-sex “marriage” is legal, that former President Donald Trump supports it, and suggested that holding Republicans to the party’s official position on the issue was not conducive to attracting voters...

It is a commonplace, but still accurate:  "Legal to do" does not mean "right to do."  Ask SCOTUS about Dobbs, or Dred Scott.

This country was founded using easily-recognizable Judaeo-Christian principles, including the moral components thereof--meaning that Natural Law is an integral part of correct governance.  The Libertarian silliness about 'doesn't hurt anyone else' is just that:  silly.  It has no basis in fundamental moral or natural law--but like a lot of silly propositions, it sounds good on the first run.

But then again, Trump was NOT elected on this issue, no matter Grenell's protestation.

Picture Perfect

 

Who Is 'Judge' Michael Hanrahan??

Actually, we don't give a damn who that "judge" is--except he shouldn't be a judge.

...According to the victim, the driver of the car was talking to an "Anthony T. Erby" on Marketplace about purchasing an Xbox from him.

When Erby and the two in the car met in the parking lot of Walmart, the driver of the car took the Xbox without paying Erby and drove off, the complaint said. That's when prosecutors said Erby fired the gun. The rear car window was shattered, and there was a bullet hole in the lower tailgate....

Fired at least a couple of rounds, one hitting the victim in the head.

Now for the good part:

 ...Court records indicate Erby is to serve four months of his probation in the Milwaukee County House of Correction. Initially, the judge had sentenced him to three years in prison, but stayed that sentence in favor of probation. ...

"The judge" is Michael Hanrahan.

So what does one have to do to gain admittance to Waupun these days??  Question an election?

Fiserv Moving "Almost Home"

We note that Fiserv's headquarters will be moving into the old Boston Store building on the SE corner of 4th and Wisconsin.

That's only 2 blocks from its original headquarters--when it was Midland Data Processing--in the Midland National Bank's building on the SW corner of 2nd and Wisconsin.

"Almost Home."

Baldwin's War on Religion Goes Kinetic

Tammy Baldwin has always opposed religion, properly defined.  Her personal grave disorder compels her to demolish the bulwark of truth.

Now she's built the offensive weapon.

Buried in the laughably titled “Respect for Marriage Act” now before the Senate are provisions authorizing the IRS to jerk tax-exemption from any church or non-profit social service agency that refuses to support the LGBQT agenda regarding marriage.

What will come in the months following enactment will be a swarm of gay couples demanding that evangelical pastors perform wedding ceremonies that many of them will refuse, as a matter of faith, to do. There will similarly be gay couples demanding that religious-based adoption agencies that only match orphans with intact heterosexual couples abandon their beliefs.

In other words, the full force of the federal government is being prepared for the assault on tax-exempt churches and church-related social service agencies that liberals have dreamed of for decades....

While Evangelicals are in the cross-hairs according to Tapscott's story, the Roman Catholic Church is the principal and primary target.

Of course, it's also possible that Tammy Baldwin is utterly stupid and does not understand "her" bill.

More likely:  both stupid and vicious. 

"FAAFO, Zelenskiy!" Chapter Three

Russia is continuing to tighten the screws on Ukraine.

...The targeting of 330 kilovolt transformers in various switching stations has cut some 50% of the distribution capability of Ukraine's electricity network. These transformers weigh up to 200 tons. There are no replacements. You do not buy them at the next corner but will have order them with years of lead time. As far as I can tell Russia is currently Russia the only producer of transformers of that type....

Oh.  That's a problem.

There's a reason for that high-precision targeting, too.

... The lack of energy is degrading the railway network that brings weapons from the west to the eastern front. It makes redeployment of units from one front section to another very difficult and time consuming. It will give the Russian forces the advantage when they change the Schwerpunkt of their attacks from one corner of the frontline to another....

You think that Zelenskiy's Reichstag Fire (missile into Poland) was a random act?

Think again.  He knows he's losing fast.  And over the next 90 frigid days, he's going to lose even more:  popular support in Ukraine.

Then he'll have to flee to his Miami beachfront mansion.

The Big Lie of '22

Granted that Joe Bai-Den is a colossal, world-class liar.  But his lying is expected; after all, he's a Democrat.

So when Republicans attempt a Bai-Den level lie, we get this:

James Comer (R-Ky.), along with lawmakers from the legislative committee, held a press conference today declaring an investigation shall commence into the Biden family’s influence peddling, the Hunter Biden laptop, and the Biden scheme to enrich themselves...

Uh-huh.

There WILL be 'an investigation,' of course.  That's not The Lie.

The Lie is implicit:  that there will be findings sufficient for prosecution AND that prosecution will follow.

Squirrel!!!

At the Poynter Institute

It is not true that Poynter employs 8-year-olds.