2020 Election Commentary

[Shasarak]

Keep denying the results! For me, every day is like enjoying a new Biden victory!

Mmm, smell that Biden victory.

[Ratman_tf]

Even if creaky old Joe wins, I'm looking forward to four years of accusations that he stole the election, and Democrats are going to sit there and take it, just as they accused Trump of "Russian collusion" and failed to ever prove one iota of it.

https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080

We're never going back to "normal". Things are far too polarized, and the rhetoric is going to get more extreme from here.

[consolcwby]

Some interesting information,
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/pollster-noticed-joe-biden-underperformed-hillary-clinton-except-four-cities/
https://nypost.com/2020/11/14/biden-cancer-initiative-spent-millions-on-payroll-zero-on-research-report/
https://twitter.com/thebias_news/status/1327755662462382080
https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1327871455594500102
https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1327511568993701888
https://twitter.com/MajorPatriot/status/1327979176478076930

And finally, Wordpress is gone to the SJWDogs (how much longer until the OSR-Movement is completely deplatformed, I wonder...):
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/11/15/the-treehouse-is-deplatformed/

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Awesome video documentary of the MAGA march in Washington, D.C on Saturday.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

[Kyle Aaron]

I particularly love how "The Democrats are incompetent" is somehow now seen as compatible with "The Democrats pulled off a conspiracy in 8 states simultaneously to change the federal election". Though somehow they couldn't pull off that same fraud, with those same ballots, to get the Senate or increase their seats in the House or the State legislatures. Because...reasons.

It makes as much sense as the idea that the Russians intervened in the 2016 election, but not 2018 or 2020. Did they just get bored with US politics?

[jhkim]

So a little more on specific election fraud claims.

Some interesting information,
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/pollster-noticed-joe-biden-underperformed-hillary-clinton-except-four-cities/

So this claims that "Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country, save for Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia."  However, that goes blatantly against the numbers I see. I just checked a few cities out of curiousity.

San Mateo: 2016 -> 237,882 Clinton vs 2020 -> 288,333 Biden

San Francisco: 2016 -> 345,084 Clinton vs 2020 -> 377,737 Biden

Houston: 2016 -> 707,914 Clinton vs 2020 -> 911,913 Biden

Phoenix: 2016 -> 702,907 Clinton vs 2020 -> 1,040,774 Biden

So I don't see how the heck he comes up with that claim. From everything I see, the differences are striking that Biden outperformed Clinton in major cities. Is there any link that shows the numbers for his claim?

https://nypost.com/2020/11/14/biden-cancer-initiative-spent-millions-on-payroll-zero-on-research-report/
https://twitter.com/thebias_news/status/1327755662462382080
https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1327871455594500102
https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1327511568993701888
https://twitter.com/MajorPatriot/status/1327979176478076930

A number of those are complaints about potential vulnerabilities of DRE electronic voting machines, which doesn't address whether fraud has actually happened. And in general, I dislike such machines. It's better to have a paper trail, for sure. But it's overwhelmingly *Republican* states that have invested in such machines, as I posted in a map earlier.

[jhkim]

I particularly love how "The Democrats are incompetent" is somehow now seen as compatible with "The Democrats pulled off a conspiracy in 8 states simultaneously to change the federal election". Though somehow they couldn't pull off that same fraud, with those same ballots, to get the Senate or increase their seats in the House or the State legislatures. Because...reasons.

It makes as much sense as the idea that the Russians intervened in the 2016 election, but not 2018 or 2020. Did they just get bored with US politics?

I have frequently read about Russian interference. I couldn't find a good summary article per se, but there is a Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2020_United_States_elections

[Mistwell]

Even if creaky old Joe wins

Oh good. Progress!

[Mistwell]

I particularly love how "The Democrats are incompetent" is somehow now seen as compatible with "The Democrats pulled off a conspiracy in 8 states simultaneously to change the federal election". Though somehow they couldn't pull off that same fraud, with those same ballots, to get the Senate or increase their seats in the House or the State legislatures. Because...reasons.

It makes as much sense as the idea that the Russians intervened in the 2016 election, but not 2018 or 2020. Did they just get bored with US politics?

"Russian interference" was always "Russians put out some fake news bullshit to add chaos". It was never that they changed any election results or hacked something. And yes they put out more misinformation this year too. So? It never bothered me much. Misinformation is not that big a deal. The extremes of both political parties and bullshit groups like qanon put out so much misinformation it's hard to get worked up about more misinformation from a foreign nation.

[Ratman_tf]

Even if creaky old Joe wins

Oh good. Progress!

Towards what? I've pointed out that the election isn't over until the electors are selected and they cast their votes. Biden is not the President elect.

[Elfdart]

I am open to a full forensic audit of the vote and using the secret service ink database to see if the VBM or absentee votes have normal distribution of ink types.  So I'm not shut off from the possibility.  But I'm absolutely not open to the idea that the media and political actors of this country would respect the process.

Ah, the new "I just want to see Obama's LONG FORM birth certificate"!

Pennsylvania court: Secretary of state lacked authority to change deadline 2 days before Election Day
Judge ruled ballots that were previously set aside should not be counted

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pennsylvania-court-secretary-of-state-changed-deadline

I just checked Marc E. Elias's twitter feed and apparently Trump and allies have one win against 20 losses. The single win which you report affected ballots in Pennsylvania which had not been counted or added to anyone's total. Not a case that's going to affect the 66,000+ Biden lead in that state at all, let alone swing a state result.

The Texas Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick, has offered a $1 million dollar reward for proof of voter fraud that leads to the arrest/conviction of the person voting illegally in other states. His counterpart in Pennsylvania called him on his bullshit in hilarious fashion:

https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1326311204923576321?s=20



The funniest part about Dan Patrick's publicity stunt is that in order to overturn the results in Pennsylvania alone, the MAGA morons would have to prove that at least 70,000 votes were fraudulent. At a million dollars each, Patrick would have to shell out over $70 BILLION that he doesn't have (the entire budget for the state of Texas for 2016 was $127 billion). Even if he only paid $25,000 for each illegal vote, he'd still have to cough up $1,750,000,000 of Texas taxpayers' money and Biden would STILL be President.

[EOTB]

Oh fuck, I'm on the opposite side of an argument from Elfdart using fap emojis - that's the universe telling you there's no reason to doubt!

The counter-arguers:

Lincoln Project crushees

Fact-checking analysts who believe the phrase "head on a pike" is not a metaphor

Assorted leftists more gleeful than any time since before they learned what "catfishing" was

Elfdart, more gleeful than any time since before he learned he could no longer catfish them

Yes, I think with opposition like this I need to reconsider RIGHT NOW before all the facts that could be, are put before a court

[Ghostmaker]

The only good meme I've seen about this was the one saying 'Not My President Season 2 starts 1/20/21, with an all new cast!'.

Which I admit was pretty funny.

But if you lefties don't think we're not going to do unto you what you spent four years doing to us? Well... it must be nice to be so easily surprised.

[Mistwell]

The only good meme I've seen about this was the one saying 'Not My President Season 2 starts 1/20/21, with an all new cast!'.

Which I admit was pretty funny.

But if you lefties don't think we're not going to do unto you what you spent four years doing to us? Well... it must be nice to be so easily surprised.

Yeah and that's totally fair. Not My President, #ResistBiden, whatever. I felt those were lame movements from the left and called them out often, and it's only fair that the right retaliate.

[Elfdart]

Is he still calling himself "Doctor"?

While it is a bit pretentious, Gorka does have a doctorate in Political Science. Strictly speaking, he isn't wrong.

He's a "doctor" like Tom Parker was a "colonel":

Haaretz

Stop Calling Him 'Dr.': The Academic Fraud of Sebastian Gorka, Trump's Terrorism 'Expert'

The only formally qualified examiner for Gorka's Ph.D. on a panel packed with personal friends was an extreme right-wing Hungarian MEP who recently advocated putting pigs heads on a fence on the Hungarian border to keep out Muslims

Early on a mustache-twirling villain emerged as the face of the Trump White House. With the mannerisms of a pompous English B-movie baddy, Sebastian Gorka is to Donald Trump what the Sheriff of Nottingham was to King John. The malevolent sidekick.

Dr. Gorka styles himself as the crusading academic. A Kissinger for our troubled times. The brilliant scholar of terrorism who has taught at elite colleges and published groundbreaking research. He often reminds the imbeciles of the press that as a man of great learning only he truly comprehends the threat of Muslims.

But experts have listened to Gorka's advocacy of the Muslim ban, attacks on the media and sterling defence of Trump's "well-oiled' administration and wondered how could such a well trained academic make such baseless and ignorant claims about topics he purports to be an expert on? In March he became embroiled in a remarkable spat with a Republican National Security consultant, Michael S. Smith. Gorka is flailing widely – tilting at enemies real and imagined.

I started digging and it didn't take long to find out that Gorka is a fraud – a charlatan of the most brazen hue – a snake-oil salesman whose supposed Ph.D dissertation would have never passed muster in America or Britain and to put the cherry on the cake was approved by an fraudulent panel of examiners. The polar opposite of Lt. Gen H.R. McMasters' celebrated dissertation awarded by UNC Chapel Hill.

Gorka is Hungarian-English. He gained an American passport in 2012. His nationalist parents fled to London from Budapest in 1956. His dissertation – Content and End-State-based Alteration in the Practice of Political Violence since the End of the Cold War: the difference between the terrorism of the Cold War and the terrorism of al Qaeda: the rise of the "transcendental terrorist, was apparently granted in 2007 by Corvinus University of Budapest.

The tract is long on Islamophobia and the unsubstantiated claims of the polemicist but short on theory, evidence or academic rigor. Corvinus is not an institution with a profile, so I looked: sadly it doesn't even make the top 1,000 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Even Gorka's attendance poses a mystery. When exactly was he a graduate student at the university? Did he take classes? Did he receive any training in Islam or Islamic studies? His CV notes that he left Hungary in 2004 to work for the U.S. Defense Department in Germany and then in 2008 relocated to the U.S. There is no evidence that he ever returned to live and study in Budapest.

The dissertation is online and includes the 'evaluations' of three referees who each presented a page of generalized comments – completely at odds with the detailed substantive and methodological evaluations that I've seen at every Ph.D defence I've been on over the last twenty years.

Two of the three referees did not even have a Ph.D. One was the U.S. Defense Attaché at the American Embassy in Budapest at the time, while the other was employed at the UK's Defence Academy and just had a BA from Manchester University awarded in 1969.

This 'neutral' examiner had published a book in Hungary with Gorka three years previously. While graduate students sometimes collaborate with their advisors the independent external examiners must have no nepotistic ties with the candidate.

More important, a basic principle of assessing educational achievement is that your examiners have at least the degree level of the degree they are awarding. Undergraduates do not award Ph.Ds.

In Gorka's case the only examiner who lists a doctorate was György Schöpflin – an extreme right wing Hungarian Member of the European Parliament who recently advocated putting pigs heads on a fence on the Hungarian border to keep out Muslims. I have been told that Schöpflin was a family friend. Both Schöpflin and Gorka's father fled from Budapest to London in the 1950s and both moved in exile right-wing nationalist circles.

If that is true, we are left in sum with a degree that was awarded in absence – on the basis of a dissertation without basic political science methodological underpinnings – and apparently from an examining committee of two of Gorka's diplomat friends, with only BA degrees; along with an old family friend, Schöpflin.

In sum, Gorka's Ph.D is about as legitimate as if he had been awarded it by Trump University. Facts matter, but so does the gathering, synthesizing and creation of knowledge that is what we call 'education.' If you fake a Ph.D you are faking your credentials. He delivers provable untruths to the American public but is believed by many because he presents himself as an esteemed scholar of Islam. Gorka would never have got away with such chutzpah in the UK.

Experience and scholarship work in harness to produce answers to questions. When you have neither experience nor training you are likely to not merely get the answers wrong, but not even have an inkling of which questions to ask.

Clearly Gorka yearns to be taken seriously and he uses the "Dr." credentials in a way that no one who earned the degree would ever do. In his 2016 screed, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, he is Dr. Sebastian Gorka on the front cover.

Tacky or just an alternative fact? This is the man we have as a chief national security advisor to the President. That may not change, but lets give him the professional respect he deserves and stop calling him 'Dr.'

Andrew Reynolds is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Follow him on Twitter: @AndyReynoldsUNC

So Gorka earned his PhD the way Elvis earned his blackbelt?  LOFL!

Strange isn't it, how out of all the right-wing thinkers, the ones that attract the biggest following are crackpots (Marvin Olasky, Jordan Peterson), frauds (Gorka) or outright Nazis (Charles Murray).