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I’m not jubilant, just momentarily relieved. We still have the hurdle of certification
and inauguration. I anticipate plenty of mischief.
We know there is an economic reckoning coming. Trump will have his hands full. Hope he will be able to navigate this on behalf of all Americans, not just the rent seekers. My operating assumption is that the Dems would have thrown “middle America” to the wolves, ala “Too Big to Fail”.
I still don’t trust the election system here. I am not counting a state as won for Trump until Trump’s lead > remaining percentage of votes to count.
So, for example, Wisconsin has already been called for Trump. But Trump leads by 0.9% with 98.75% of votes counted; therefore I am remaining skeptical of the late-night cheat. Similarly Trump leads in Pennsylvania by 2.5% with 96.9% of votes counted – not yet enough to absolutely insure against the late-night found ballot trove. I will believe it when all the counting is done.
And the House still hasn’t been won yet. Without the House we will all be treated to an entertaining 4 years of Leftist lawfare against the President; literally daily motions to censure or impeach.
Just to expand on my earlier comment, I consider the following states still undecided:
Arizona (11 EV)
Georgia (16 EV)
Michigan (15 EV)
Nevada (6 EV)
Pennsylvania (19 EV)
Wisconsin (10 EV)
That is a total of 77 electoral votes that are not quite in the bag. All the early celebrating is making me nervous; I feel like the one sensible guy at the beginning of a 70s disaster film.
For example, in Georgia the two counties with 10% of their votes still to count are Fulton Co. and Chatham Co., homes of (respectively) Atlanta and Savannah. If the voting holds the way it has been going in those counties, Harris picks up about 35k votes, or about a quarter of what she needs.
But if she sweeps the remaining 10% of those (Democrat stronghold) counties, as for example if some aggressive ballot-finding were to occur, she could expect to pick up enough votes to just barely win Georgia by a nose.
I am not saying it will happen, I am saying it still can happen. It’s not yet time to celebrate; it’s time to buckle down and run the last mile of the race. Vigilance now, party later.
EDIT: In Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Co. is the county with counting still to do; guess which way that county swings? If Harris sweeps that county PA will be in danger of falling blue.
I will be honest. I am utterly flabbergasted. I did not think there was any way he could win. If you look at it from the beginning of the year, four indictments, two massive civil trials, two assassination attempts, a media that went from highly biased to (in the last few weeks) utterly insane, a massive financial disadvantage. And yet he won. I think what I find most surprising is that I have never met someone like him, who has that level of resilience and courage, that level of “never-quit”. That “never-quit” did not serve him or the country well four years ago, but it sure did this year. I don’t really like Trump as a person, but I am in awe of these sorts of personal qualities.
But the battle has just begun. The dems took a spectacular spanking, but soon enough they will pick up the pieces, and you can be sure that, along with the utterly biased media, they will fight for every inch of ground. Only a man with Trump’s qualities has any chance against that.
And let us not forget that he will have congress on his side this time.
By no means do I think the Trump will rescue the west from its inevitable decline. But he will, I think, put it on pause for a few years.
I share Ferox’s concerns. It seems bizarre to me that the media ‘call’ States for candidates, not the equivalent of the UK’s ‘Returning Officers’ (presumably the State Secretary of State or an authorised officer). Perhaps Harris going silent and saying she’ll come back tomorrow is a way to avoid a concession and wait for the last votes to be found, er counted.
Having said that, the media and World reaction and the BBC even conceding it will make it difficult to rig after the event. Judicial Watch got a ruling in one Circuit that only votes received on election day can be counted.
The sobering reality after every contentious-but-successful election:
The Democrats ought to use their time in the wilderness to conduct a rigorous post mortem of course, coupled with an appropriate purge.
My suggestion would be to find a few fresh faces for their leadership, ditch the wokery and the “progressives” post haste and appeal to the more traditional Democrat middle-of-the-road base.
They have four years to get themselves in order.
Good luck!
@JJM
But that would mean the Democrats rowing back to the centre… and I suspect there are too many left wing activists and other interested parties to allow that to happen. Could the ‘rigorous’ post mortem conclude that the Party wasn’t ‘progressive’ enough?
You can be sure that the Harris campaign is feverishly trying to find 120k more votes in GA (97%), 91 K in PA(97%), 30K in Wi (99%) . 170k (99%) in NC might be tough to pull off. I’m guessing that’s the delay in the concession speech.
For Britain, it should be clear there is no free trading world to jump to outside Europe. Back to the EU then.
@Exasperated
I’m guessing that’s the delay in the concession speech.
My guess is she is too emotional to handle it. That, or perhaps her plan was to eat this “no” for breakfast and see if it fixed things?
One of the big pluses of this win is that we will never have to hear that loathsome woman again, nor the even worse Tim Walz. Let us all share our compassion for BobbyB who is still going to have to deal with that idiotic, lying phoney as his governor.
Since that Biden-Trump debate, I never doubted Trump would win, assuming the democrats couldn’t resort to industrial scale cheating.
The failed assassination attempt made Trump look like having the mandate of heaven. Sure, Harris was dropped in and the dems temporarily recovered but I thought it was all hype and no substance. That brat summer BS fizzled out fast, and no one really cares about Taylor Swift or Kylie B endorsements. Same goes for endorsements by Bush era lunatic ex-
Republicans like the Cheney family. Harris is the shittest major party presidential contender in my lifetime if not ever. And Walz was just as bad….fat, stupid, low energy and low testosterone. Neither would go on Rogan, while Trump did and went on the other two biggest podcasts in America. Trump even did an interview with the wrestler the Undertaker which I thought was marvelous stuff.
Harris campaign was a zero out of ten. Trump I’d give a 8 or 9. Maybe a ten if they do actually win the popular vote.
They aren’t going to find the 30K in WI, since the county with remaining votes is Winnebago, which went to Trump.
But Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada are still in play. I am sure the phone lines at the DNC are staying warm right now.
“Could the ‘rigorous’ post mortem conclude that the Party wasn’t ‘progressive’ enough?”
My sense is that would probably mean the Democrats could be out of office for some time.
Depends. Does “drunk” count as an emotion?
Only if Chardonnay counts as a wine.
(How can you trust a pol who drinks Chardonnay by the liter?)
This is an excellent explainer for those who don’t understand how Trump won – and sort of a liberal Western anti-woke manifesto. Long but worth it, and excerptable:
https://jeffgoldstein.substack.com/p/i-am-not-voting-for-donald-trump
On the subject of finding votes in Wisconsin…being every bit as worried about “the steal” as others, I was watching several of the county results sites during the night, comparing with the 2016 and 2020 final results as things progressed. Though there was some variation as you’d expect, there was a picture building up almost everywhere in the state of Trump outperforming 2020 by a few percent. Then we get to Milwaukee county.
In 2020, in round numbers, Biden won the county 70/29, with 317K votes to Trump’s 134K.
Last night, the numbers progressed upward to Harris on 220K, Trump on 110K, 66/33 split. Trump outperforming 2020 but a few percent, exactly like the rest of the state.
Then everything stopped for more than 3 hours. No change whatsoever in the dead of night. But the next time the site updated, new numbers:
Harris 310K, Trump 130K, and Trump’s back on his 2020 figure of 29%.
Which, for those of you keeping track, means that the precincts whose votes were added after everyone was in bed, went for Harris 90K votes to 20K, or 81/19, thus having Harris in those areas outperforming the entire rest of that already-very-Dem county by 15%. Perhaps such a thing is valid, but I would love to see someone put on the spot and have to explain that…
I have got used to the brash New York property developer.
Back in 2016 I was working AGAINST Donald J. Trump – as a small (very small) part of the Ted Cruz on-line campaign.
But Donald J. Trump did NOT prove to be the Democrat in disguise that people like me said he was – on the contrary he pushed a conservative agenda in office.
Not a perfect conservative agenda certainly – but vastly better than either President Bush, and vastly better than Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak here (Liz Truss sincerely tried to be pro liberty – but was betrayed).
I only wish that President Trump had better times in which to be President – he inherits an American that is both economically and CULTURALLY undermined, times are going to be very bad – and he may, unjustly, get the blame for the crash of 2025.
But I wish to apologise again for how badly I misjudged Donald J. Trump in 2016.
Few people could have stood up to the savage attacks that he has been subjected to for so many years – I certainly could NOT.
God protect you President Trump – in this world and the next.
I don’t think they’ve got a pile of votes still to count, I think they have counted all they have and the rest are “expected” votes. It’s the twelve million biden votes which have mysteriously evaporated through improved oversight.
Just to be pedantic: it is ‘drunkness’ that counts as an emotion.
Most of Mr Ed’s comment seems worth quoting, even if it might seem a waste of space:
Part of the reason why the above is worth quoting, are the analogies to 2020.
In 2020, it seemed bizarre that the media called it for Biden.
And, given “media bias”, it might seem even more bizarre that now the media are calling it for Trump.
And just like 2020, this year “the media and World reaction and the BBC even conceding it”, “will make it difficult” to question the results.
Just FYI –
No one officially “calls” the election results until approx Jan 6th – which is the stage where the electors are approved and tabulated.
The media has always been in a competition with each other to announce winners before their competitors. The math is hard – there are 205,000 outstanding uncounted votes, from a county that normally goes 60% for Dems, and Smith the R is 100,000 down, so he probably can’t win, so “we call Alabama for Jones!”
And, once one candidate hits the magic 270 electoral votes – 1/2 plus 1 – the networks can “call” the overall national winner.
But it’s not official.
A concession from one candidate will usually be taken as an honorable surrender, but it isn’t really, in a legal sense, if that candidate changes his mind.
We all want to know who won ASAP, and certainly we’re not waiting for Jan 6th, so we get the networks and other orgs “calling” a winner.
But we could still see a state announce major “corrections” to their count tomorrow, and things would change.
I am genuinely surprised that Antifa haven’t been out peacefully protesting.
A genuinely spontaneous and independent mob would surely have been at least as indignant about this result as they have apparently been about various other matters in recent years so why so quiet? Could it be that their presence is in fact carefully orchestrated and, should that be the case now, what are they being held back for?
It’s all rather eerie. Movements like this don’t just go away – certainly not at arguably the least appropriate time in recent years.
The Democrats are a cypher for the will of their major billionaire donors. Until the likes of the Lauren Powell-Jobs (Emerson Collective) to name but one change their views (which they won’t) the Democrats are up the infamous creek without a paddle.
I’ve been amused reading Reddit. Many people there are despondent about Trump’s win. A large group of women, convinced that Trump is going to usher in “The Handmaid’s Tale”, are talking about getting themselves sterilized and also making a pact not to ever have sex with men again. Other people are talking about how the Latino population has let them down. It’s quite amusing but it’s also disturbing how detached from reality these people are. They really, sincerely, believe that Trump’s goals are to reduce women to domestic sex slaves and that all men who voted for Trump explicitly want this and have voted for this. Other ostensibly Harris supporters think that Latinos, having failed to vote correctly, should be deported.
How real these discussions are is up for debate, but I’m inclined to think they are mostly real people. There are a lot of bots on Reddit, and trolls of various kinds, but there’s something about these conversations that is authentic. The despair is funny, but also disturbing. It does, however, explain why there isn’t more visible unrest, they’re too busy being despondent.
I used to think the internet would usher in a second enlightenment. Unfortunately it has and is increasingly showing us that a significant portion of the population, perhaps a majority, are credulous, paranoid and ignorant. Like the proverbial horse, they will not drink from the pool of enlightenment even if access is unrestricted. The number of people falling victim to financial scams is another example of this, people are lazy, greedy and credulous – easy prey for fraudsters. In the early years of the internet I thought people would wise up to scams, they’ve proven increasingly vulnerable to them instead. I think it’s time to consider if the internet hasn’t been a disaster. When significant parts of your population begin to believe that it’s better to sterilize themselves than to raise children in what must be objectively one the safest times in human history, there’s something seriously wrong.
To build on what bobby b. wrote, which is not wrong but maybe incomplete – the States have varying rules for certifying elections within the state, and also for elections that will move up to the Federal level – specifically, elections for President and Vice-President.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/election-certification-deadlines
Generally, most elections are to be certified and therefore unchallengeable at the state level 15-30 days after election day. Federal results certified at the state level are then passed up to the Federal level and these are certified by the Congress on January 6th, the same date that new Congresscritters are sworn in and assume their powers. So the results are official and certified relatively-quickly – allowing time for legitimate challenges and recounts at the state level – but more time is required for them to work their way through the Federal system. Most ‘challenges’ after the date of State certification are little more than performative posturing – even Bush v Gore got short shrift from an actual court willing to take the bull by the horns.
Electors for President and VP are approved and certified at the State level on similar timelines, and their numbers are known well-before January 6th. In a similar way, challenges to state electors on January 6th are mostly performative posturing – both parties indulge in this sort of meaningless tantrum each election cycle – and they are usually quickly dismissed by normal.procedure.
Federal republic, boys and girls – different than what some of you are used to.
llater,
llamas
Alex
I watch the American podcaster, Tim Pool. His programming is geared to the young, especially young men. Over the last couple of days, Pool was playing clips of young women wailing and jibbering insane, vacuous, nonsense about Trump. These women were repellant and off putting. The Pool panel was urging and imploring their audience to vote. “Look at this woman, she’s voting. She’s going to determine your future unless you get out there and cancel her vote.” Anecdotal but amusing.
FWIW. My sister’s theory regarding some of the missing millions of Dem voters on Tuesday: In the past, Dems padded their vote by submitting ballots on behalf of the “no show” Low Propensity Voters.
This year the LPVs couldn’t be counted on to stay home. They turned out and voted for themselves.
I smiled when the wise man on CNN coughed and spluttered about the electoral college (conveniently ignoring the fact that Trump had also won the popular vote) professing that no other nation on earth had such a convoluted and unfair system.
Meanwhile over here:-
4th July 2024
Liberal Democrat’s
3,519,143 votes = 72 MPs
Reform
4,127,610 votes = 5 MPs
Regarding the ‘missing millions’ of voters, Eugene Volokh has a better analysis of this via e-mail at Instapundit, and he concludes that it’s basically a mirage caused by comparing final vote tallies from 2020 with incomplete vote tallies from 2024. His numbers make sense, so this appears to be a nothingburger.
llater,
llamas
“Many people there are despondent about Trump’s win. A large group of women, convinced that Trump is going to usher in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, are talking about getting themselves sterilized and also making a pact not to ever have sex with men again. Other people are talking about how the Latino population has let them down. It’s quite amusing but it’s also disturbing how detached from reality these people are.”
(I’m in Canada.)
Out early on an errand this morning, I tuned in briefly to the Progress channel on SiriusXM. The wailing and gnashing of teeth – coupled with the bizarre grief counselling approach adopted by the female host there – was quite extraordinary. A couple of the male callers’ whiny sad voices made me wince. I felt a desperate need for someone like Loretta Castorini (Cher’s character in Moonstruck) to slap these guys and shout “Snap out of it!”
In other words, get up, dust yourselves off and get a grip.
But then, shortly afterwards, I had to abandon the channel because a creeping sense of schadenfreude was starting to get the better of me.
Liberal women removing themselves from the gene pool sounds good.
The disparity in ballot counts from 2020 is definitely a mirage of incomplete reporting and not that in 2020 you had widespread use of universal mail in ballots (often with minimal checks in the name of “COVID”) that turbocharged the already well established practice of ballot harvesting e.g. by using union goons to “help” people fill in ballots at assisted living facilities which Broward country has refined into an art form.
I think the protests will happen at the inauguration. I would say Jan 6, but I doubt anybody could absorb that sort of irony. I also think that the left is pretty stunned by how badly they lost and are on their back foot. Stunned because they have been feeding the public a constant stream of lies, some of them utterly insane lies, and they believed their own propaganda. And perhaps also that they have been forced to see how little influence they have.
As to the videos of wailing people upset at the loss. TBH I don’t really like that sort of thing. I feel a bit of schadenfreude when seeing TV hosts and politicians despair. They made their own beds. But for many of these people they have been fed a steady diet of lies about what is going to happen. The only sources of information they have are telling them we have just elected a Nazi who wants to take away abortion, IVF and contraception, and wants them chained to the sink. They have been told that Trump will send the cops to arrest them for voting the wrong way, and will wreak vengeance on all who opposed him. Gay people have been told their marriages will be invalidated, interracial couples have been told they will be split up and forced to marry within their own race. Of course they are upset. The fault is with the dreadful news channels who have spent the last year in particular, and for the last four weeks have gone into utter insanity mode. I think of these people who are so upset as more victims of that horrific mendacity rather than figures of derision.
I know and care about some people who are in true despair. Their fears are very real to them; they have had it hammered into them like Goebbels on steroids. And I think it is rather unkind to mock them for it. The purveyors of the lies of course deserve all the contempt we can muster.
I just hope that as the Trump Presidency plays out they will find some solace, and some realization that they have been lied to.
Fraser
You are right, it is counter productive too mock the people who have been hoaxed. They should have the room to both self correct and save face. I do wonder though, if they will wise up when reality doesn’t match the fable. Like Doomsday cultists will they revise the date of the Apocalypse that never materializes?
I would phrase that as, “they have chosen sources of information . . . ” They have access to the same sources of info that you and I use, and we seem to have received a more accurate picture of life than they did.
They should choose better. They’re not victims, they’re willingly buying crap information that feeds their egos and preconceptions.
BTW, per Scott Adams ( podcaster,Dilbert cartoonist and creator) exposing the “Fine People Hoax” seems to be a very effective antidote to the propaganda. Sometimes that’s all it takes to open people’s eyes.
@bobby b
They should choose better. They’re not victims, they’re willingly buying crap information that feeds their egos and preconceptions.
I think you overestimate how smart people are. People here are probably a couple of std devs above average so aren’t really a good sample. There are a lot of people who really aren’t up to the task that you expect of them here. And I think also that it is the fast food phenomenon. People are actually busy with their lives and so eat whatever is within easy reach. I mean who, but people like us, really have the time to find better sources than the ones being jammed down their throats? Especially if we have had “fox news is hateful propaganda” fed to us with our mothers’ milk?
And, speaking for myself, I am very unlikely to change my mind to align with someone who is mocking me while I’m in pain. I think kindness is the most underestimated of virtues and I think magnanimity is the appropriate reaction here.
Once again, it is not a matter of IQ.
Otherwise, how do you explain all the fine scientists who swallow whole obviously-self-contradictory narratives about “the patriarchy”, “systemic racism”, “Islamophobia”, and “trans-phobia”?
And I insist on the obvious self-contradictions in those narratives.
It means that you do not even need to find alternative sources of information to know that they are wrong. (But you do need alternative sources to feel confident that you are not crazy in thinking that everybody else is wrong; because not everybody else is. Just remain skeptical even about alternative sources — as i am about Samizdata 🙂 )
— Speaking of intelligent people swallowing establishment propaganda: Obama’s conceit in thinking that Black men don’t support Kamala because she is a woman (to the point of lecturing them about the need to overcome their prejudices) just goes to show that at least some people in the establishment believe their own propaganda. People smarter than Obama’s VP, and his VP’s VP.
Maybe somebody can remind me whether it is the old or the new Congress-critters that certify the presidential electors?
Recounts are fine and dandy, but when there are irregularities in the voting process, what i’d really like to see is a special election.
Failing that, i think that all the State electors should be disqualified on January 6. The State government will learn the lesson; and if they don’t, then the State voters will vote accordingly.
@Snorri Godhi
Once again, it is not a matter of IQ.
I think smart people subscribe to the leftist view point for different reasons that less smart people do. The left’s propaganda is polyvalent. And I think you overestimate yourself. I think you are certainly very smart, but we all have lots and lots of contradictions in our own narratives. People compartmentalize so that they can believe contradictory things.
I think it is worth comparing this to religion. I’ll pick on Christianity because I know it better than others, but I think this is generally true of all religion to some extent or another. Both smart and not so smart people believe in religious ideas but often for quite different reasons. If you listen to smart people describe their justifications for their religious beliefs they are often quite sophisticated (William Lane Craig or John Lenox), complex logic based on unfounded axioms, with highly truncated chains of reasoning. But if you listen to less smart people their justifications are completely different, often depending on things like how they feel or encounter life, or obviously coincidental things or what “must” be true and so forth.
And all of it, like I suspect most of human reason, is not founded in the reason itself, but is rather a logical construct based on what people want to be true rather than what actually is true. And I should say that why people “want” something to be true comes I think mostly extrinsically from their environment, but I’m happy to concede there is more to it than just that.
And to be clear, I think I do that all the time too. I try not to but sometimes what I want overwhelms my ability to reason logically. In the case of Trump, for example, I really believe in free trade, so his tariff idea makes me squirm, but I do find myself in mental pretzels trying to justify it. I don’t think all of my justifications are entirely without merit, during Covid I did find it disturbing how much the US was dependent on China, a potential enemy, for really basic things like drugs, but I do find myself twisting often to shape my views to the package of views advocated by someone I advocate for.
I came across this video recently which I think well illustrates this point. The title is clickbait, but the content is interesting.
gnome – yes, millions of “Biden/Harris voters” have vanished. The 2020 United States Presidential Election was a fraud – and people who still deny that fact are not worth spit.
As for what motivates leftists – a sharp distinction must be drawn between the innocent dupes and the activists.
The innocent dupes are like most of the people who voted for Proposition One in New York State.
The legal text of Proposition One was NOT on the ballot paper – only a wildly biased “summery” of the State Constitutional Amendment was presented to the voters. The voters were duped into thinking that Proposition One was an “anti discrimination” measure – but, when one reads the small print, it is the exact opposite. Proposition One allows (indeed encourages) the government and allied corporations to engage in discrimination – supposedly to counter past discrimination (even though New York State has had anti discrimination laws since the 1940s). But most voters did not know that – they thought they were voting for anti discrimination and they were actually duped into voting for discrimination.
But what of the activists, the media and-so-on – and the corrupt JUDGES of New York State?
They know very well what Proposition One is – and they know what all the main leftist policies are, and they know the terrible effects these policies have – and they revel (yes revel) in the suffering that these policies cause.
So it is not a knowledge problem or an IQ problem (two different things) – the leaders of the left, the people who actually make and push the policies, know (know very well) the harm, the suffering, they cause – and they like doing that.
It is really that brutally simple – although it took me decades to accept this bitter truth.
Here’s a link to Volokh’s “Quick Reminder: Don’t compare…” mentioned by llamas (November 7 at 12:36).
Volokh seems to be suggesting that around 45% of Californian votes haven’t yet been counted (or at least “aren’t yet included in that tally”). A quick check with Bloomberg suggests he’s correct: so far, 55.3% of Californian votes have been counted.
Per Ferox, is it safe to ‘call’ California for Harris when almost 9 million votes are still in play (total estimated number of votes being 19 million)?
I mostly agree with Frasier on biases, mis\dis\plain-old information and the rest of it. Although I tend to dislike mocking in general, so maybe I’m biased there.
My 2 cents on free trade vs tariffs: just as in an interpersonal context free trade is only as free as the involved individuals are, in an international context it is only as free as the participating nations. So, since in reality no nation is perfectly free, the less-free nations are sure to at least try and take advantage of the freer ones, and so it is the right and even the duty of the latter to protect themselves from the former. IOW and to paraphrase a paraphrase, tariffs are war by other means – i.e. not a good thing in and of itself, but sometimes inevitable.
We ought not absolve people who had the opportunity to find information and simply didn’t look – it was always out there, just not in places which made them comfortable. Voting in an informed manner is an important responsibility, and if you cannot or will not search for knowledge actively, then you ought not vote.
These people screaming in the vids all exhibit at least a basic understanding that a very important national election just happened. They obviously understand who won and who lost. They seem to understand that there are consequences to this choosing.
If, in the face of something of obvious importance (to them!), they still simply went with their herd, their apparent ignorance is not something I can excuse. If what you said is a justification for their laziness, then perhaps we need to be qualifying people for the right to vote.
(I had to look up “polyvalent”, and yet I still managed to gather pertinent information and make an informed choice. 😉 )
Passaic New Jersey is
74 % Hispanic,
15% Orthodox Jewish, and 7% Black.
2008: Obama: +22
2012: Obama: +28
2016: Hilary: +22
2020: Biden: +16
2024: Trump: +3
Is this the Realignment?
Is it, was it inevitable?
I mostly agree with Alisa on trade, though I would add a qualifier, to highlight fair trade. Competition, by Western countries, is hobbled by fair labor practices, environmental constraints, a regulatory maze, energy costs……..
Everything has trade offs. Our betters should be seeking a fair balance that also takes into account National Security. We also need to recognize that Trade R Us. It’s sloppy to blame multinational corporations and the financial sector. Retirement and Union Pension Funds have significant foreign investment portfolios. They are not disinterested bystanders.
BTW
wTF is going on in Amsterdam?
Fraser:
And I think you over-estimate your reading comprehension.
I have been writing for years that low IQ is less of a problem than delusional insanity (in xxi century politics), and now YOU tell ME that my being smart doesn’t mean that i am not delusional! I worry about being delusional almost every day! When i read something, the thought that both the writer and myself, the reader, are insane, is always at the back of my mind.
But i never compare my insanity level to anybody else’s, only to my own insanity of decades ago. That gives me comfort.
— I also note that Paul Marks still refuses to admit that insanity must be distinguished from ignorance, stupidity, and wickedness.
Exasperated:
To me these are some of the things that make countries less free. Not that I automatically oppose them, just mentioning it as a matter of fact.
A pogrom.
Robert Spencer, an “”Islamophobic”” scholar that you probably have heard of, has an article about the Amsterdam pogrom.
One interesting thing that i have not seen mentioned in Spencer’s or other articles, is that Ajax, the Dutch team, has Jewish connections of a sort.
If you read Wikipedia at the link, you might wonder, as i do: Should free speech be unrestricted at soccer matches?
What makes it interesting? As far as I can tell, it could be any other team playing an Israeli one…
From a month ago: Dutch police refuse to guard Jews, claim moral objections
From a month ago: https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/11/08/dutch-officers-refuse-to-protect-jewish-sites-over-moral-concerns/
Agreed, but it must also be noted that the relative military power of the nations engaged in trade also matters.
It is OK for the US to run a trade deficit with, say, Vietnam.
It is not OK for the US, let alone any other country, to run a trade deficit with China.
It does: war by other means does not preclude war by conventional means or the preparedness for it.
Yes indeed there is the military point – understood by Adam Smith (“defense is more important than opulence”) and others.
And there is also the economic point – creating endless money, from nothing, to fund endless imports is insane – utterly insane. It is not what the great economists called Free Trade – they were all hard-money people, they totally opposed creating money from nothing.
Nor will the People’s Republic of China just sit on this fiat money – they will use it to buy the land, and the homes (the mortgages), and everything else, in the United States. Reducing the American population to serfs in what was their own country.
An economy can not be based on creating money from nothing and using it to buy endless imports – an economy must be based on productive work.
@ Snorri Godhi – I apologize for missing your query.
In answer to your question, the Presidential election is certified on January 6th by the newly-elected Congress and not the departing Congress. I burbled on my timeline – this election cycle, the new Congress will be sworn in on January 3rd, 2025.
HTH,
llater,
llamas
Can anyone in the know let me know if the extremely slow counting in Arizona is normal or are they trying anything that will stick to screw Kari Lake over?
Most third world countries seen to count ballots faster than Arizona.
@ Martin – “or”?
Given that one of the senior administrators of the election system in AZ has just had past texts exposed in which he expressed a desire to “make Kari Lake’s life hell” – I think you can draw your own conclusions.
‘Finding’ and ‘curing’ ballots takes time, and you can judge for yourself how much ‘finding’ and ‘curing is going on by the amount of time it takes to do it.
llater,
llamas
Thank you llamas!
Makes me glad the presidential race doesn’t depend on the outcome in Arizona now, as you have to suspect that they’d be trying to fuck over the Donald if the race was on a cliffhanger relying on the result there.
@Martin
Can anyone in the know let me know if the extremely slow counting in Arizona is normal or are they trying anything that will stick to screw Kari Lake over?
Arizona is notorious for this and I think it is primarily due to incompetence though I don’t doubt there are some shenanigans. But it is worth pointing out that Arizona is only visible because it is so close in the Senate. CA and MA have also both only counted about 70% and 75% of their ballots respectively at the time of this comment four days after the election.
It is worth pointing out that the house of representatives has not yet gone republican. And most of the uncounted seats are in California. If the dems hold the house it will be a VERY different picture in the next two years. Most people seem to say the R will win with a tight majority, but the deed is not done yet.
I think it is fair to say that in the past America had the gold standard in elections, today they are an utter disgrace in how poorly they are run. We really need Russia and Burkina Faso to send over some election observers to check for fairness.
Thanks for the information.
If some country in eastern Europe, Asia or Africa had such slow counting I suspect the New York Times and State Department would be crying foul play and the latter be trying to organise a colour revolution.
Maybe we should ask Jimmy Carter to observe the US elections…
Too soft! Everyone in charge of the election authorities in Arizona should have UN sanctions applied to them 😉
It’s a good point – Smith supported the Navigation Acts for this reason.
Really? Really??
Haha I missed that earlier. You don’t even need to read anything to know America has a history of election fraud. A couple of Scorsese movies show you enough – Gangs of New York (Boss Tweed/Tammany Hall in New York) and The Irishman (the Mafia helping rig the polls in Illinois in 1960).
Just noting that it is 35 years today since the Berlin Wall fell. The Left have been busy working on replacements Worldwide since.
That the big cities are corrupt in their voting process (and in everything else) has been known in the United States for centuries (yes – centuries).
People who claim to not know, or who actually deny, this fact – claiming, for example, that the United States Presidential Election of 2020 was “free and fair” are either deeply ignorant, or deeply dishonest.
Sadly journalism seems to have collapsed into a “School of Journalism” ideology – of pushing the establishment line and just repeating government and corporate press releases – and not “just” on elections.
A natural disaster has caused lots of death and suffering – do you (A) go out into the smashed areas and talk to the survivors, or (B) repeat the line you have been given from various government agencies and their corporate and NGO associates?
If you answered “B” – you are a modern media person.
Also why attacks on Trump for having previous mob links fell flat. Some of those who used to be in the mafia like Michael Franzese have explained that they controlled all the construction related unions in New York, so everyone who wanted to build anything in the state – including state officials – had mob links whether they knew it or whether they liked it or not. So Trump was not atypical here. Plus the mafia had a huge influence over the democrats in many of these cities. Apparently Nancy Pelosi’s father as Baltimore mayor was completely mobbed up. Focusing too much on any links the Donald had or didn’t with the mob may lead to focus on the definite links many senior democrats have with organised crime.
Martin:
🙂
OK, I was just trying to be funny in my reply to Fraser.
But as a matter of fact i had specifically in mind:
* the 1960 presidential election;
* Gangs of New York.
In fairness, though, i must say that i do not know how free+fair elections were in Europe, and the rest of the Anglosphere, at the time.
Regarding the slow-rolling of election counts and results in AZ, and elsewhere – after so many election cycles in which these issues keep on occurring in some places and not in others, one can only assume the only reasonable explanation is that those running these elections want it this way.
After all, we need only examine the example of the state of Florida, which had a decades-long history of all sorts of election issues. The 2000 election was the most-obvious, but entirely-typical. And then Florida elected a governor and a legislature on the promise to fix it, and they followed through, and now Florida runs elections entirely-free of drama, which all sides agree are fair and honest, and they report complete and accurate results just a few hours after the polls close. It’s east to do – if you want to.
That being so, the next question is – why do they want it this way? Who benefits from a slow count? In and of itself, nobody. But when you combine a slow count with, at the same time, the most accurate and continuous reporting of the numbers and locations of those votes that have been counted – now you have something else entirely. Add to that a process in which the total number of votes cast is uncertain. Mix in a whole slew of actions, driven by court orders and sometimes made up on-the-fly and without oversight by election officials, by which ballots can be added to the’total’ at indeterminate times and places. And top it all with an almost-manic obsession with anonymizing ballots as quickly as possible, so that they cannot be verified, either as to the individual voter, or the location that the vote was cast. Even better if you can even persuade a court to rule that ballots that were never verifiable in the first place – no signature, no date, no correlation to an actual qualified voter – are also magically valid and must be counted as though they are as good as gold.
I will leave it to your imagination to conjure up all the ways that such a system may be manipulated.
The results sometimes challenge the application of the term ‘Kafka-esque”. Here in Michigan, we have just had the case of a Chinese national, a student at the University of Michigan, so definitely not a confused peasant, who registered to vote – ain’t ‘motor-voter’ great? – and then voted a full ballot in this last election.
The evidence that he did this was 100%-complete, he admitted to doing it, everyone knows what he did. And – guess what? His ballot was still counted.
Didn’t read about that in the New York Times – did you?
Coming back to Arizona, and also some parts of California, I think I may have laid out some of the reasons for these frankly-laughable delays. But, for every nefarious scheme, there’s always a more-nefarious scheme – there’s always a bigger bear. And some reports are suggesting that strongly-Republican districts and precincts are deliberately slow-rolling their results until the last possible moment, to frustrate efforts that the system might otherwise allow. ‘Finding’ and ‘curing’ ballots takes time, and if you don’t know how many you have to ‘find’ or ‘cure’, and time is running out, things get a lot harder, as well as becoming glaringly-obvious. It’s like running out the clock in football. If true, good for them. Interesting to note that most of the unresolved House seats in AZ and elsewhere ate widely predicted to be Republican wins. Purely-coincidental, I’m sure.
Yes Martin – New York is the most unionised American State, it was Progressive long before California was. Indeed arguably the first great Progressive move in New York – was the bizarre “consolidation” of 1898 when very different cities (sometimes divided by natural barriers – such as the sea, what on Earth is Staten Island doing as part of the same city as Manhattan?) were shoved together to form a mega-city – which was soon building itself vast admin buildings with a million feet of office space for bureaucrats (that is NOT the total amount of office space – that is just ONE of many admin buildings – this one finished in 1914).
New York survives because the government backed (Federal Reserve from 1913 – National Banking Acts from the 1860s) Financial Industry is there – otherwise it makes no sense as (unlike London) its taxes and regulations are much worse than the rest of the country, and its courts (not just against Donald J. Trump – against anyone who steps out of line politically or culturally, and sometimes just because some is personally disliked – even if they tick all the correct Progressive boxes) are incredibly corrupt.
Who would want to run a business where the taxes and regulations are much higher than other places, things are very unionised, and the courts are deeply corrupt? Well very few people – if it were not for the flow of Credit Money coming out of the New York Federal Reserve.
By the way – in terms of debt, Chicago, if we take things like the School Board and the Cook County debt into account, may be even worse than New York City.
Snorri – it was hard to rig elections in Britain before 1872 because they were out in the open – although there were often drunken punch-ups in the towns.
When the secret ballot came in so did Victorian morality – which, contrary to endless attacks, was a real thing. They really were, mostly, honest – even in London, the big city (and the one with the most vice).
Bribes and corruption were already a way of life in New York, at least in New York government – but not in “the smoke” (London – which had its own problems, such as fog mixing with coal smoke and producing stuff that damaged your lungs, the cockney way of speaking sounds like someone gasping for breath because that is exactly what it started out being, so many people had lung disease that even the people who did not have it ended up talking like the people around them who did).
People died young in the East End of London – and it was not lack of “Social Reform” (as writers kept claiming) it was because the wind tended to come from the West – and the fogs came up from the east (from the sea along the river Thames) and mixed with the coal smoke (the only practical power supply at the time), given 19th century technology levels, not much could have been done about it – when technology changed then so could other things (hence the clean air Acts – they were passed when technology made them feasible, pass them in the 19th century and London could not have operated).
In New York the air was better – because the geography was different. But public projects cost more – because of bribes and corruption which did not exist (or existed much less) in London.
Llamas – as you know Kari Lake was blatantly cheated in 2022 (which showed that “they will just do it to Trump – when they have got rid of him, there will be honest elections again” was false).
This time there has been an intense media smear campaign over the last two years – extreme even by standards of the despicable media. And there is also the “what is the point of voting for Kari – the Dems and the RINOs will never let her be elected” factor.
Donald Trump is famous for doing deals – Kari Lake is famous for NOT doing them. Offer her a deal and she will report you for corruption – and then you will have to bribe one of the corrupt Arizona judges to let you off.
This makes her far more unpopular with establishment (i.e. corrupt) Republicans than President Trump is – they may not like President Trump, in fact they may hate President Trump – but they know that, in the end, he is not going to have them all arrested for their various crimes.
Kari Lake really would have them all arrested for their corruption – and send them to prison. Remember the first words on her Twitter (now X) bio – “Follower of Christ” the scary thing (scary for the corrupt – of both parties) is that she means it. Someone who sincerely believes they are on a mission from God to go after the child abusers, and so on, is not someone the establishment (with all their crimes) is going to be comfortable with.
I am astonished that the lady has not been murdered yet.
I will be even more astonished if they let her win the election – if they do that they are in serious trouble.