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As many as 18 (at this writing, and possibly more) Republican Georgia state Senators have signed a letter to Vice President Pence, asking him to delay tomorrow’s scheduled counting and confirmation of electoral votes by Congress. They cite irregularities in the election that don’t “pass the smell test” and need to be investigated.

This probably won’t make any difference to tomorrow’s proceedings, but it’s one more in a growing pile of objections that Democrats and the media keep dismissing at their peril. Responding to all the suspicions of vote chicanery with “You’re wrong, you’re stupid, shut up!” is going to be as effective as trying to hide the smell of a dead fish by putting it under your sofa cushion.

As conservative talk show host Mark Davis writes, what is most likely to happen is that Joe Biden will become President. It doesn’t make me happy to repeat that, but it’s realistic.

And Redstate.com explains that much of what you’ve heard about the 12th Amendment is incorrect and the Vice President is extremely limited in what he can do.

However, if the vote is certified, it’s up to Biden and the Democrats whether or not he takes office under a cloud of suspicion that may never blow away.

What should happen, if the people who claim there’s “no evidence” of vote fraud really believe that, is that they should vote unanimously to comply with the request by Republicans in both Houses for a 10-day, transparent audit of the vote, to settle all questions once and for all. If the election was legitimate, then Biden can take office without an asterisk next to his name in the history books. It’s a solution that I suggested right after the election in an “open letter” to Biden, for which I got slammed in the media. But if he’d done it then, it would’ve saved a lot of time and trouble.

President Trump had to try to govern for four years with a large number of Democrats claiming he stole the 2016 election and was an “illegitimate President” (Hillary Clinton among them.)

They fought like cougars against everything he tried to do, using every resource in government, media and the courts to obstruct his agenda. If this is left to fester, Biden will face having to govern even more people with the same anger, only stronger, and they’ll actually have some reasons to believe it.

2020 All Over Again

January 4, 2021

I know I’m supposed to be OUTRAGED over this leaked telephone call between President Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. The left is railing over Trump pressuring Kemp to find enough votes to show that Trump actually won.

Redstate.com listened to the entire call and had a very different take from what we heard from the media.

Personally, I’m more depressed than outraged. Here I was, like most of us, thrilled that 2020 was finally over. Yet January of 2021 kicked off with Democrats and the media accusing Trump of multiple felonies and demanding that he be arrested/impeached for making a phone call in which Trump told another head of state that he needed to get a handle on corruption under his watch that involved someone named Biden. All I could think was, “Oh no! 2021 is just going to be 2020 all over again!”

Historic Week

January 4, 2021

I hope you had a safe New Year’s weekend and didn’t get burned setting off fireworks while stuck at home on your couch. But it’s time to leap back into the fast-moving news, since this promises to be a historic week.

Tuesday will be the Georgia runoffs, where the balance of power in the Senate, and therefore, in the entire federal government, will be determined. The very next day, President Trump will attend a massive rally in Washington, DC, to protest alleged vote fraud, while Congress is voting on whether to accept the results of the electoral college vote for Biden – and we already know that there will be challenges to that from both House and Senate Republicans.

Sen. Josh Hawley is no longer the only Republican Senator who plans to join about 140 House Republicans in challenging the certification of Biden’s electoral vote victory. The momentum seems to be shifting toward fighting to hear the evidence, after a conference call Saturday between Trump and Congressional Republicans.

Sen. Ted Cruz has joined about a dozen Senators in saying they will call for a challenge that sparks an automatic debate. Here’s more information about that

And video of Cruz on Maria Bartiromo’s show, explaining it in person…

Cruz made some good points, such as that the Supreme Court should have done its job and taken the cases presented to it, and that claims that there’s no evidence of voter fraud mostly come from people who haven’t seen all the evidence gathered or have refused to look at it. He also said that Congress faces two “lousy” options: accept a vote that tens of millions of Americans have no faith in, or reject it and be accused of setting aside an election because their candidate didn’t prevail. So he said the Republicans will push for a third option: perform a 10-day, bipartisan and transparent audit of the vote, which will expose corruption if there was any or reassure Americans that Biden’s win was legitimate if there wasn’t any.

(This is not unprecedented: there was similar concern about fraud in three states in 1877, and Congress appointed an electoral commission to look into it.)

Tune out the howling from the media and ponder that, and I think you’ll see it’s not only in the best interests of America, but if the media and the Democrats (pardon my redundancy) are so certain of their adamant denials that there was any vote fraud (well, not enough to sway the election, at least; just an “acceptable” amount of vote fraud), then here’s a great way to prove that, show up their critics and remove any lingering suspicions that will surely dog a Biden Administration for as long as it lasts. If only some prominent person had suggested this solution right after the election! Oh, wait, someone did: me.

I would remind Democrats who would oppose a 10-day audit that when they claimed the 2016 election was rigged by Russia and Trump was an illegitimate President, they got to spend two years and 30 million of our tax dollars letting Trump’s worst enemies investigate him and everyone connected to him with virtually no restraints, legal or otherwise. If they prefer, we could go that route. But when you look at it like that, doesn’t a simple, 10-day audit of the vote sound a lot better?

Former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grennell had some interesting comments on Sen. Ted Cruz’s call for an audit of the vote, noting that the Democrats had shifted from “there’s not any fraud” to “there’s not widespread fraud” to “there wasn’t enough fraud to overturn the election.”

Speaking of former Intelligence agency members, there’s a report that a loose network of about 400 former investigators and operatives from several federal intelligence agencies have taken it upon themselves to look into the 2020 election. Former CIA agent Robert Caron says the group has existed since 2014, but it’s quickly grown as former agents have volunteered to investigate the election because “the fraud was so massive and so blatant, despite what the mainstream media said, that we need to get this information out to the public.”

UPDATE:  

In response to Byrnes’ charges, an official with the Fulton County, Georgia, elections department told the fact-checking site Leadstories.com that the extra ballots seen in the warehouse were not counterfeits but emergency extra ballots required by law in case they had to go all-paper ballot. More on that here.

ORIGINAL STORY

As promised over the weekend, here is our full report on Patrick Byrne’s account of secret nighttime ballot-shredding in Georgia.

Byrne, founder and former CEO of Overstock.com, has been working on behalf of President Trump to expose massive, targeted fraud in the 2020 election, and he appears to have hit some serious paydirt last week. Acting on a tip, he sent an operative to get what he claims are pictures, video and samples of fake ballots being transported last Wednesday night under cover of darkness from the Fulton County Warehouse to a shredding facility. A screen grab of everything he tweeted on New Year’s Day, complete with pictures, is included in this piece from AMERICAN THINKER.

Note that every tweet in the thread is labeled in bright red by the helpful folks at Twitter: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.” Twitter automatically sticks this warning on anything having to do with election fraud, even –- perhaps especially –- on tweets from President Trump. Ludicrously, they do this even if the tweet itself includes evidence that clearly shows wrongdoing.

The timing of this alleged shredding party is quite interesting. Last Wednesday, the Georgia senate subcommittee on election fraud held a meeting to hear evidence, during which Jovan Pulitzer, the inventor and patent holder of the electronic barcode scanner, testified that he could look at ballots and tell right away exactly what had been done to commit election fraud. He wanted just TWO HOURS with the ballots from two different areas of Fulton County, he said, and that would tell the tale. As if that weren’t enough, he stunned his audience by dropping the bomb that as he spoke, his team had hacked into the Dominion voting system that was used November 3, the same one that is now being used to vote in the Georgia run-offs for U.S. Senate. He said they WERE IN. Dominion claims that the machines are not connected to the internet and that this cannot happen.

Pulitzer said all they had to do was hack into one of the electronic poll pads and use that as a way in. It’s apparently easy as pie if you know how to do it. They can siphon information out of the machines, change it, and put it back in, essentially without detection, he said. In the days since he made the claim, we the public have not yet seen his proof, but everyone’s been really quiet about it, including, as far as I know, Dominion. Byrne did say in his tweets that he’s got to run everything past lawyers before he can reveal it to the public. So we’re waiting.

But Pultizer said it was the ballots themselves that would tell the tale. He can spot any counterfeits and tell the type of paper used, he said, and even where it came from –- China, perhaps? Likewise with the ink. He can tell if a person filled out the ballot by hand or if a machine marked it. Numerous election workers have already testified they saw ballots that looked as if they’d been printed on different paper and marked by machine, with one perfect little oval in the space for Joe Biden and the rest left blank.

It’s possible that ballots used in heavily Democrat district were the real thing, designed to be counted by the machines, but that the ones used in Republican districts were fakes, misaligned to generate errors, which then have to be “adjudicated” by election workers who did that job far, far away from the prying eyes of Republican poll watchers.

Anyway, at the end of Wednesday’s meeting, the subcommittee voted unanimously to recommend that Pulitzer and his team be given access to the ballots. This recommendation still had to go before a judge, so a hearing was set for 11AM Monday in Superior Court. Unless Chief Justice John Roberts is moonlighting on that Georgia court, Pulitzer might very well be given access to the ballots for a couple of hours on Monday and at that point, either put suspicions to rest --- wouldn’t that be nice, Democrats? --- or confirm them.

But it was on Wednesday night, just a few hours after that unanimous vote, that the rented Enterprise trucks allegedly pulled up to the warehouse where the ballots were stored. Here’s AMERICAN THINKER’S earlier report, written before anyone knew about Byrne’s tip and the documentation his operative was able to get that night.

Ballots were loaded up and, according to Byrne, driven to a specialized document shredding company, where they were shredded not just into little strips but military-style, into tiny “spitballs” roughly the size of individual molecules. I would imagine processing that much paper in that way would be extremely expensive, but probably worth it if you're trying to keep people out of jail.

In the photos, Byrne’s got boxes and boxes of ballots with close-up pictures of their labels. He’s got stacks and stacks of ballots sitting in the Fulton County Warehouse, presumably awaiting pickup. He’s got close-ups on individual ballots, which I would think could be blown up large enough for Pulitzer to find any problems with the printing on them. But that might not even be necessary, because Byrne says he also got sample ballots.

Oh, and one slightly hilarious "coincidence": the labels on these boxes show they were addressed to the attention of Dwight Brower at the Fulton County Department of Voter Registration and Election. Mr. Brower is one of the people who reported the burst water pipe at State Farm Arena as a reason for stopping the counting on election night.

There was no burst water pipe. No service call was even made. The only problem involving water was a leaky toilet or urinal, apparently in a bathroom on the floor above. Oh, no --- man the lifeboats! Abandon ship! Except for a crew of four who are going to stay behind and drown--- I mean, continue counting ballots that appear magically from under a table.

AMERICAN THINKER did a great job of fact-checking the “fact”-checkers who tried to debunk the claims of improper counting at State Farm Arena.

As for Wednesday night’s shredding party, Byrne even has a map tracing the route of the trucks. Video apparently exists as well; Byrne tweeted that the file was too big to load. I like to think that when Georgia’s vote is challenged during Wednesday's joint session of Congress –- as we know now it definitely will be –- and the House and Senate retire to their separate chambers for two hours to talk amongst themselves, this video, along with a complete report from Pulitzer on any problems with ballots or voting machines –- will be part of the evidence presented. Cross your fingers.

I am beyond sad to have to report that Dawn Wells (Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island”) has died at 82 of causes related to COVID-19.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dawn-wells-dead-mary-ann-gilligans-island-was-82-1149549

The first crush of a generation of ‘60s-era boys and one half of the eternal “Mary Ann or Ginger” conundrum, Dawn Wells’ TV image as a sweetly sexy, sunny, optimistic, fresh-faced girl next door was no act. She said she built the character, and the core of Mary Ann was her and her values. Although her parents divorced when she was four, she insisted she did not grow up in a broken home, writing in her book, “What Would Mary Ann Do? A Guide For Life,” “I was raised by a very good mother and a great dad.”

She recalled that in middle school, she was chubby with severe acne, braces and bad knees from ballet lessons, but she was popular, proving that "the bell of the ball doesn't have to be a belle." Still, she blossomed into quite a belle, becoming Miss Nevada 1959 and competing for Miss America. Aside from “Gilligan,” she appeared in many TV shows, movies and plays. Later in life, she was active in a number of charities, including education for film students, helping the disabled, saving elephants and making clothes for the elderly.

Even though she tried to de-wholesome her image a little by doing “The Owl and the Pussycat” on stage after “Gilligan” ended, she never escaped that island, nor did she want to, returning for reunions, staying friends with her castmates and expressing gratitude to fans who never lost their love for her. When she fell in 2018 and word got out that she couldn’t pay her hospital bill, she was flabbergasted when a GoFundMe page raised $190,000 for her in one month.

Her late co-star Russell “The Professor” Johnson once noted that “Gilligan’s Island” was savaged by critics during the hip and turbulent ‘60s, but decades later, it’s still running everywhere in the world, and new families are watching it together and laughing at its clean humor. Even some of the critics later admitted to him that they’d watched it again and decided it really wasn’t that bad after all.

But how could any show be bad when it had Mary Ann and Ginger? (I’m glad to report that Tina Louise is still with us, although she is now the last surviving “Gilligan” cast member.) In fact, maybe what TV needs is more characters like Mary Ann Summers (yes, she had a last name.) Dawn Wells agreed.

In 2008, she told the Television Academy Foundation, "There hasn't been a Mary Ann on the air for I don't know how long. There hasn't been a good girl over 14, and Mary Ann was very much that…The Mary Ann-Ginger issue is always there. You had to be a real man to understand Ginger, and Mary Ann would've gone to the prom with you and been your best friend. A lot of guys would come up to me and say, 'I married a Mary Ann.' She had the values."

A good lesson for today’s TV sitcom producers. We are all sad to lose Dawn Wells, but Mary Ann will live on in reruns forever as the first crush of generations of boys still to come.

By "Huckabee" pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.facebook.com/hollywoodhifibook)

Joe Clark RIP

January 2, 2021

Retired high school principal Joe Clark died Tuesday at 82 at his home in Florida after a long battle with an unspecified illness.

During the ‘80s, Clark became nationally famous for his tough love approach to education. He turned around one of the worst schools in New Jersey, expelling 300 students in one day to get crime and drugs under control. He painted over graffiti, chained the doors shut against criminals and required students to know and sing the school song on demand. He was also famous for patrolling the halls with a bullhorn and a baseball bat. In a statement, his family said, “Steadfast in his approach, Clark explained that the bat was not a weapon but a symbol of choice: a student could either strike out or hit a home run."

Liberals assailed him for instilling discipline in public school, but President Reagan offered him a White House policy adviser position. The public gave its verdict when “Lean On Me,” a movie of his story starring Morgan Freeman as Clark, became a major hit and audiences gave it a rare Cinemascore rating of A+.

Here are some remembrances of Clark from Morgan Freeman, who called him a father figure to the kids and “the best of the best in terms of education.”