Via email from a friend and reader who shall remain nameless:
I’ve volunteered to be a poll worker out here in Georgia. I did the primaries, and just finished training for the general election coming up.
For the Primaries, it was all about how to follow the process, how the machines worked and how to troubleshoot them, and what the laws were around voting and how my county interpreted those laws.
This year, the training included visits from two law enforcement agencies with training on active shooter response and other unpleasantness. There is more discussion this year about mob violence (which includes mass ‘victim’ protests), and even the occasional entitled soccer mom ‘Karen’, who thinks election laws can be broken for her convenience and will scream “Disenfranchisement!” if we don’t break the law for her. We’re not allowed to be armed, but my county will station an under-cover officer who is armed at each poling place.
Even money has Stacy Abrams creating a scene in which her supporters create a huge disturbance at a polling location in order to get a poll worker to yell at them or tell them to leave. Then we’ll see a video clip of a nice ‘family of color’ going to vote, spliced to the angry poll worker yelling at them to leave. Personally, I think it’s more than even money this will happen. The state elections board made a big deal about this in their training.
Also interesting is that a new law was passed in Georgia requiring the ballots to be hand-counted before leaving the polling place! When I heard about this, I was thrilled! I’d love to get a hand count of the human-readable names on a ballot and compare that with the tally garnered from the barcode printed on those ballots. But alas, that is not how it’s going to work. The way the law is being interpreted is that the ‘number of ballots cast’ will be counted and compared against the scanned count of ‘ballots cast’ to make sure they match.
Ugh. We did that on our own initiative after the primaries just as a due diligence check to make sure that the number of registered voters checking in matched ballots printed matched ballots recorded. We had a solid paper trail and multiple witness signatures for any discrepancy (printer ruined one ballot that needed to be re-printed. We kept the ruined ballot, voided it, and documented the occurrence. Anyone with a discrepancy with a voter registration was given a provisional ballot, and the county will deep-dive into that voter’s legal registration status before counting or tossing the vote. This part we do very well indeed.
It’s the bloody barcodes, and the fact that I don’t know what they tell the counter! I’d be happy to count all the ballots for A and for B manually, and then check that against the report from the counting machine. We post the results from the counting machine at each voting location on the door of the poling location after the polls close. Immediately transparent. But without an audit of the counting machines, I don’t trust them. They’ve been wrong before.
The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue.
It’s really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle.
So it’s really, really, hard, much harder to build consensus today than any time in the 45, 50 years I’ve been involved in this. You know there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc.
But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.
So what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.
"Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win…the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change."
It’s been, only two days since someone, allegedly, tried to kill Donald Trump again. And you are here at the podium in the White House Briefing Room, calling him a threat. How many more assignation attempts on Donald Trump until the president, and the vice president, and you pick a different word, to describe Trump, other than threat?
If you question their violence inspiring rhetoric, they declare your speech is dangerous. Then, if you listen to the rest of her response, she doubles down on Trump being a threat.
This is what they think of you.
Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know about their attitude toward the First Amendment?
We’re going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs.
Using the 2nd Amendment as sort of a canary in the coalmine seems to work well. If they won’t respect the 2nd Amendment, why should you expect they will respect any other rights? And, of course, once they have sufficiently infringed upon the right to keep and bear arms you don’t have the means to effectively push back when they infringe all your rights all the time.
Via an email, which had “terrorism” instead of “the dynamite bomb” in the quote, from pkoning.
While it captures the appropriate sentiment succinctly, it is not all that accurate these days. It appears to me that Israel is doing rather well in their fight against the terrorists/dynamite-bombers in their neighborhoods while using few, and perhaps zero, Winchester rifles. As was reported in a briefing at work last week:
They compromised the supply chain and delivered pagers with explosives to Hezbollah leadership. They blew them up almost simultaneously. Hezbollah then went to walkie-talkies and those were blown up. When Hezbollah then assembled in a single building for face-to-face communication, they blew up the building.
This will be studied and admired for years to come as one of the most creative, complex, and well executed operations in the history of warfare.
Precision guided bombs, M-4s, M-16s, tanks, and hand grenades have been delivering some very authoritative answers as well.
Whatever you think of their religion, ethics, and/or political behavior, they have certainly demonstrated if you don’t respect them, you risk coming to fear them.
I hope gun owners don’t have to teach similar lessons to those who fail to respect us and our rights.
JPFO is issuing a travel warning to Jews and other 2A supporters and urging an economic boycott for Middlesex County, Massachusetts after Newton Police arrested Scott Hayes for defending himself from a violent, antisemitic attack.
Scott Hayes was peacefully exercising his rights protected under the First Amendment with a small group of people in the town of Newton, MA. A person in the group was carrying an Israeli flag when a man began yelling antisemitic remarks at the group from across the street, calling them “sick” for supporting Israel.
After a few words were exchanged, the man charged across the street, tackling Scott Hayes to the ground and attempting to wrap his arms around his neck in order to cause even more harm than he had already done. At that point, Mr. Hayes exercised his natural right to defend himself, pulled out a gun and shot the assailant in the abdomen. After freeing himself from the man’s clutches, Scott retreated and attempted to get his assailant medical attention. The assailant is expected to survive.
Mr. Hayes was arrested by the Newton Police who sought and obtained a criminal complaint against him for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The District Attorney is pursuing charges against Mr. Hayes for having defended himself against a violent antisemitic attack. While many state officials in Massachusetts have, for years, been enemies of the Second Amendment, this latest event is a record-breaking atrocity even for them. State actors actively defending violent antisemites while leveling criminal charges against those who defend themselves against them, sends up a warning for all Jews to steer clear of Massachusetts, if at all possible, especially Middlesex County. Antisemitism is on the rise and now we have state officials in Massachusetts formally and proudly defending it.
I think it would be easier to just stay out of all of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York City until Federal prosecutors start charging and convicting the rights hating police and local prosecutors. Without prosecutions it is going to take a new generation to change the mindset of the criminals running these locations.
More than 1,000 zombie knives and machetes have been surrendered to one police force as new legislation banning them becomes law.
Avon and Somerset Police said the weapons had been handed in to 15 surrender sites across the region and urged people who still had them to turn them in.
The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.
St. George Tucker Blackstone’s Commentaries 1:App. 300 1803
England and the US have certainly lost much of our liberty, and we are in danger of losing more. It is time to take it back.
With news continuing to filter in about the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the nation’s prominent Democrats expressed relief that Hitler was OK.
Following a busy weekend of making public statements and social media posts clearly identifying Trump as “literally Hitler” and telling the country that he posed a grave threat to the existence of the United States, Democratic leaders quickly made it known how glad they were to find out he was unharmed.
“We’re just glad the greatest threat to democracy is safe,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “I know just an hour or so before he narrowly avoided a second attempt on his life I posted online about how he was leading the charge to destroy America and had to be stopped, but I’m relieved to hear that he wasn’t harmed.”
Harris and Walz can tout their status as gun owners and tip their hats in false homage to the right to keep and bear arms as often as they wish. It’s all subterfuge.
Another tidbit from the same article I found interesting:
In 2008 Harris joined an amicus brief defending complete bans on the possession of handguns and advocating for a 20th century revisionist view of the Second Amendment that renders it little more than a superfluous authorization of state National Guard units.
A complete ban? I wonder if that was before or after Heller. The distinction may be important at her trial.
The next time you see a social media post from a military veteran who claims to support banning certain firearms or any other infringement of our civil rights, realize they may be getting paid to violate their oath.
An email obtained last week by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project revealed that the “precision micro-influencer” marketing firm People First is hiring veterans to serve as paid social media influencers for the Harris-Walz campaign.
Pape surveyed more than 2,000 Americans in late June, before the first attempt on Trump’s life on July 13. The survey found a disturbing willingness, across the political spectrum, to say that violence was warranted to eliminate political foes.
The poll, from the Chicago Project on Security & Threats, released in June, showed that 6.9% of Americans — or the equivalent of 18 million adults — believed that it was justified to use force to restore Trump to the White House. In another question, 10% of Americans — or the equivalent of 26 million adults — said they believed political violence is justified to prevent Trump from becoming president again.
The ratio of people on the left willing use violence compared to people on the right in consistent with my hypothesis.
With 26 million people believing violence is justified to stop Trump from reaching office we should expect assassination attempts every few weeks. And every attempt against Trump increases the likelihood of an attempt on Harris.
Remember, the spark that started WW1 was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. A civil war could easily be sparked by a political assassination in this country.
A man with an AK-style rifle pointed the firearm’s muzzle into Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, as the former president was playing a round, prompting the U.S. Secret Service to open fire, according to three law enforcement officials.
The FBI is investigating what it called an “attempted assassination” of former President Donald Trump after Secret Service agents fired at a man with an AK-47 on or near Trump’s Florida golf course on Sunday.
A spokesperson for Donald Trump‘s campaign said the former president is “safe.” Law enforcement sources told ABC News a suspect is in custody.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the gunman was 300 to 500 yards away from the former president when he was spotted. Secret Service agents fired and the suspect dropped the gun and fled, a senior law enforcement official told ABC News. It was not clear if the suspect was aiming his weapon at Trump.
The source said the suspect got into a vehicle and witnesses reported the license plate number which was tracked by authorities. The suspect was stopped and taken into custody.
Even at 300 yards a semi-auto AK has pretty low odds of connecting with a single fatal shot. But it sounds like the suspected assassin may have been waiting for Trump to get closer.
A gunman was captured Sunday after apparently trying to shoot former President Donald Trump at a golf course in Florida.
Trump is OK, and no injuries were reported by authorities after Secret Service agents fired at the gunman they spotted in the bushes.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the incident took place about 1:30 while the former president was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
They immediately sealed off the area, after Secret Service agents fired four to six rounds at the gunman.
The agents were a couple of holes ahead of where the former president was playing when they spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the course shrubbery.
I could make a lot of speculative comments but I’m going to let the story develop more before saying what Trump supporters are probably already thinking.
As we enter the homestretch of the 2024 election, Harris is trying to pull off the greatest magic trick in the history of American politics. She is attempting to make the Biden-Harris administration disappear. She wants to convince voters that she and President Biden had nothing to do with the last three-and-a-half years.
More than that, Harris seemingly wants to pretend that Trump is somehow the incumbent president, and that she is the upstart “change” candidate fighting against the failed policies of the last three-and-a-half years. It is surreal to say the least.
It is a slick sleight of hand doomed to fail, because people will believe their “lying eyes.” For tens of millions of voters, the number one failure of the Biden-Harris administration is the economy, quickly followed by immigration, crime and health care. These voters will tie the incumbent vice president to those failures.
Harris, elitist Democrats, academics, media personalities and celebrities existing in entitled bubbles of luxury and personal safety can embrace Jan. 6, Roe v. Wade, etc. all they want, but this election is still going to come down to the bread-and-butter issues of the economy, immigration, crime and affordable and reliable healthcare.
And on that score, it will be the Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck who will push Trump over the top to victory in November.
A falsehood they have a significant investment in.
Celebrities pontificating on subjects they know nothing about.
A comforting falsehood, even when the uncomfortable truth is obvious.
I don’t think anyone can reliably know what will happen in the next few weeks before the election to predict anything better than they can predict the flip of a coin.
Furthermore, a good case can be made that it is not a fair coin, and a probable T side result will be reversed in the dark of the night to show an H.
In last night’s three-on-one debate the ABC News moderators used misleading crime data from the FBI to ‘fact check’
@realDonaldTrump. The reality is that Trump (as he usually is) was right – crime is not down – it is up, way up. Kamala Harris and her willing accomplices in the mainstream media would have you believe that violent crime in America is at a 50-year low, a narrative eagerly parroted by so-called fact-checkers at Politifact and now ABC News. The reality, however, is far from what they claim. The only thing at a 50-year low is the integrity of violent crime data. Less than a year after taking office, Biden-Harris’s administration had the FBI dismantle the long-standing crime reporting system, replacing it in 2021 with a new, ‘woke’ system that is optional for state and local law enforcement agencies to use. As a result, at least 6,000 law enforcement agencies aren’t providing data, meaning that 25% of the country’s crime data is not captured by the FBI. This deliberate underreporting skews the statistics, painting a falsely optimistic picture of public safety while real Americans continue to suffer from rising crime rates.
Democrat-controlled cities from New York to San Francisco have effectively decriminalized violent crime. For instance, in New York City, 52% of violent felony cases are downgraded to misdemeanors, and offenders are typically offered diversion agreements that keep these offenses out of crime statistics. This manipulation alone could account for a 50% or more drop in reported violent crimes in the Big Apple. Across the country, Soros-backed prosecutors are refusing to prosecute violent criminals or downgrading their charges in record numbers. This systematic underreporting and leniency are tactics used by Democrats to create a misleading narrative about public safety, while communities continue to suffer from unchecked crime. It’s not far-fetched to imagine that the Biden-Harris regime and the Democrats replaced the FBI’s universal crime data system with a new optional system to fabricate this massive decrease in ‘reported’ crime. The move raises serious questions about their motives and the integrity of the data. Of course, the Democrats will argue that the new system is more inclusive, allowing law enforcement agencies to record pronouns and gender identities, including transgender and nonbinary, as well as the sexual preferences of both criminals and victims. The timing and optional nature of the new system suggest an ulterior motive: to obscure the real rise in crime and present a false narrative of improvement under Democratic leadership.
Additionally, we know that the 70 Soros-backed prosecutors, representing 72 million Americans and half of the nation’s 50 most populous cities and counties, have made it their mission to implement so-called restorative justice. This approach often means refusing to prosecute violent criminals based on factors such as race and gender identity. The few criminals they do prosecute almost always have their violent felonies downgraded to misdemeanors. Both of these realities—the new optional reporting system and the restorative justice efforts—have led to violent crime data that fails to reflect the true state of our communities since 2021. These manipulations distort public perception and allow Democrats to promote a false sense of security. National polls reveal that most Americans believe crime has increased significantly over the past four years. The situation is even more dire in large Democrat-controlled cities, where almost all residents report a massive surge in crime. Most residents even report that they or someone in their family has been a victim of crime. Take Chicago, for example. Every weekend, approximately 70 people are shot. The crisis has escalated to such an extent that the mayor recently canceled the city’s contract with a company that detects and reports gunfire. There are so many gunshots in Chicago that police can only respond if someone is actually hit by a bullet. New York City is similarly experiencing a huge spike in robberies and assaults, often occurring in broad daylight. The situation became so severe this year that the governor had to deploy National Guard troops to the NYC subway system to deter criminals. Before District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Attorney General Letitia James took office, these violent crimes would have been prosecuted as felonies. Now, if they are prosecuted at all, they are often downgraded to misdemeanors with diversion deals. There is also ample evidence that the FBI and the Biden-Harris regime are simply cooking the books. Watch Jesse Waters expose what he calls Enron-style corruption in their crime reporting. The next time someone tries to tell you that Biden and Harris have reduced crime to its lowest levels in 50 years, let them know the truth. It’s easy to claim a decrease in crime when you leave out data from 25% of the population living in major cities like Los Angeles and New York City. The reality is, these omissions paint a misleading picture of the state of crime in America. Don’t let them gaslight you with manipulated statistics. Demand full transparency and accountability in crime reporting to get the real story.
Candidate Harris and her co-conspirators claim crime is at a 50-year and the gun control she and Biden implemented are responsible for this. That Biden and Harris are responsible for the violent crime rate is at least partially true. But it is not something to be proud of.
‘Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff,’ she said during the debate with former President Donald Trump.
Did you hear that? She is one of us! Yay!!!!
But, of course, the way you can tell she is lying is that her lips are moving. From the same article:
During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Harris proposed a series of gun control policies, even backing a controversial government-run mandatory gun buyback program.
She detailed her position in an MSNBC forum on gun safety in October 2019.
‘We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,’ she said.
Harris warned there were already estimates of up to 10 million assault weapons in the United States.
‘We’re going to have to have smart public policy that’s about taking those off the streets, but doing it the right way,’ she said.
“Mandatory gun buyback”? She can’t “buyback” something she didn’t sell us. Of course, the phrase really means they will take our tax money at gun point, give some of it back it to us as an inadequate payment for the guns they are forcibly taking from us and will then tell us we should be thankful they gave us some of our money back.
Hey, Gwen. You and your husband picked June 4th, the day of Tiananmen Square Massacre, as your wedding day and went to Tiananmen Square for your wedding anniversary.
Don’t pretend that you don’t know what a tyrannical government can do to a disarmed population!!
You want to eradicate our Constitutional right to bear arms. You are a Communist and a threat to our Republic!!!
Theirs is a rot that goes deeper than the marrow of their bones.
There may have been a time when the Left in the US had some integrity to their belief but decades of embracing the premeditated death of innocents have corrupted their souls to where no vice is too low for them to commit in their pursuit of power.
I used to wonder how the Nazis or the NKVD/KGB killers could be so beastial in their actions, but reading how they didn’t spring from the maw of Charon fully formed but rather they gave away their souls bit by bit in exchange for a modicum of power and bread, I see that this is where we find ourselves today.
Our foes on the left would gladly kill any of us if it means they could rule over the abattoir.
I don’t know how things will turn out. I see too many paths depending on too many variables to make any kind of prediction or to have a significant influence. I have resigned myself to giving whatever nudge I can in the direction of fair and just trials for the perpetrators. But mass psychology being what it is, and the thin veneer of rationality our species has means that is likely a low probability outcome.
