The Buffet Problem

 

One of the things we miss most in this age of Covid-19 restaurant closures is the all-you-can-eat buffet. Back when you could do that sort of thing, you could grab a plate, go up to any of the counters, and grab whatever you wanted.

Of course, the bad thing about a buffet is also the best thing about a buffet - you can have whatever you want. So, if it suits your fancy to fill your plate with desserts instead of having a salad, nobody can stop you, except possibly yourself.

Facebook works like that, but with a twist.

Imagine this: instead of a buffet counter you walked up to, you were seated at a buffet where the food comes to you on a conveyor belt. As the food items go by, you can help yourself to whatever items suit you. Then sit back and wait for the next thing you like.

Except, this buffet table is watching you, and responds to the items you take.

If it sees you help yourself to a piece of pie, suddenly the conveyor starts bringing you all kinds of other pies. If you then choose a chocolate pie, suddenly the non-stop desserts heavily favor chocolate treats. And while this might strike some people (including me) as being in heaven, if you spend too much time at this particular buffet table, you will be too heavy to ever leave!

This is precisely what Facebook does.

If it sees you like right-wing news, it starts bringing you lots of other right-wing news items. If it sees that you hate Joe Biden, it starts feeding you all sorts of negative news items, true or otherwise, regarding Uncle Joe. And if it sees that right-wing conspiracy theories undermining Biden suit your fancy, well, then you get lots of those items, too.

Pretty soon, you are utterly convinced that Joe Biden is a Venezuelan Communist, in the pay of China, who didn't win the election. And you KNOW this, because you've seen an "overwhelming preponderance of evidence" regarding this.

No. What you've seen is the teeniest, tiniest supply, the one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent, of information out there. Likely, it is easily debunked, or would be, if you were ever allowed a balanced perspective.

But Facebook does not currently care much about a balanced perspective. Just as the buffet table doesn't particularly care if you eat healthy. All it cares about is serving you what you want. As does Facebook. It wants you to keep looking, to keep clicking, because that's what keeps your eyeballs glued to the Facebook scroll, where the advertisers are. And its those advertisers that transform Mr. Zuckerberg's platform into money.

The fact that it has made you into a flat-earther who questions the moon landing in the process is nothing more than an externality.

The human brain is easily hacked! We've known this ever since we mass-produced refined sugar and saturated trans-fatty acids, and seen corporations use them to boost food sales. We've known it ever since sex and violence have been used to boost the sales of movies and video games. We've known it ever since heroin and cocaine took over our cities' streets. And just like heroin and cocaine were supplanted by more virulent drugs like crack and crystal meth, the news has been supplanted by the truth-optional news; news which gives you your desired truth rather than the actual truth; truth that gives you a non-stop parade of desserts down the conveyor belt.

Yes, I just equated Facebook with crack cocaine.

We need everyone in the news industry to take an oath to disseminate only truth, just as physicians take the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. We need the FCC to punish untrue news stories with substantial fines. We need a solid North Star to navigate by!

We need the conveyor belt to make us eat a salad now and then.

And the free market isn't going to do this by itself. Because, if left to its own devices, it will keep sending us nothing but chocolate and bacon down the conveyor until we all die too young.

Eric

*

O, Ye Christians Gone Astray!

I'm surprised I don't blog about theology more, because I was once a part of the Evangelical Christian world for much of my young life.

In middle school and high school, I was known as the "Jesus freak" kid, with a small, Gideon New Testament Bible in my back pocket and wearing Stryper t-shirts.

My first stint in college was at North Central Bible College (now called North Central University) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The school year I spent there, from the fall of 1990 to the spring of 1991, was one of the busiest and happiest of my life.

When I left the faith, I found myself dragged to the truth, kicking and screaming. Prying myself loose from the Christian community which was my second home, and in many ways my first home, for the sake of Truth, was like tearing off my own skin.

So I know a thing or two about religion.

Which is why I'm not so amazed at the denialism which is rampant within the Evangelical community. And by "Evangelical," I mean the Pentecostal, Charismatic, Prosperity Gospel, Fundamentalist variety which crosses, and sometimes erases, the borders between denominations.

It all goes back to abortion and the culture war. Trump is seen, not as a holy warrior, but as God's tool. He is like King Cyrus of Persia in the Old Testament, sent by God to crush the Babylonian Empire and thus allow the Jews to return home to the Promised Land. Cyrus was no holy man, but he did serve God's purpose, according to scripture. And that's how the Evangelical Christian Church sees Trump. He is God's useful strong-man, a bludgeon with which to beat back the hordes of liberals who threaten Jesus' elite.

This is why they pray for, and sometimes over, Donald Trump. Even as they lay hands on him, they ignore that they lay hands on one who has actually starred in pornographic films. Because that doesn't matter. What matters is God's victory, not Trump's character.

The denials of Biden's victory often come directly from the "power of faith doctrine" which is so rampant within the Evangelical community. It stems from Mark 11:23, which says, "For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith."

In other words, "claim" it by faith, "believe" that you have it already, and you'll then get it!

It's a central dogma of the "prosperity gospel." Those who tithe faithfully can "claim" financial prosperity by faith, too!

Now, anyone can empirically test this. If I tell Mount Shasta to get lost, it won't go anywhere. It will still be there, no matter how much I believe otherwise. And while it's true that time and erosion will eventually make it disappear, I'll be long gone by then, too!

Still, there's something to be said for the hubris and self-confidence that this philosophy engenders. People who believe that a certain success level is their destiny or birthright tend to achieve that success level, whether they deserve it or not. This idea has appeared and reappeared in popular culture, and not just within Christianity, with everything from Norman Vincent Peale's "The Power of Positive Thinking," to "What the [Bleep] Do We Know?" to Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret." People tend to achieve what they fervently believe they will achieve.

But there's a dark side to this philosophy, too.

Back when I was a Christian, I observed the sad situation of a woman I'll re-name Gina. Gina had multiple sclerosis, and was slowly dying. Her husband had to carry her into and out of church on many occasions. She claimed her healing by faith, and for years I heard her thanking God that her body was healed. But she never received healing. The miracle she professed never happened. I heard she passed away not too long ago.

In fact, I observed many fake "healings" during my time at Bible College. People see the "healings" which are broadcast on TBN or CBN, because that's what they see in a one-hour program. They don't see the following day, when the person "healed" returns to their walker, or wheelchair. But in Bible College, the few students who had medical need of crutches or wheelchairs, walked awkwardly around campus without them for about a day or two, and then went right back to their crutches and wheelchairs afterward.

Now, the typical response received when this sort of thing is pointed out to a Christian is that the person wavered in his or her faith. But that's a cop-out, and deep inside, they know it. Still, they reference the story of Peter in Matthew 14:22-23. When he saw Jesus walking on the water, he asked to go to Jesus, and Jesus said "come," and Peter began walking on the water too! But then Peter saw the wind and the waves, doubted in his heart, and began to sink. "Lord, save me!" he cried out. Jesus did save him, and then Jesus said, "Oh, ye of little faith. Wherefore didst thou doubt?"

We're seeing that same sort of doctrine play out in regards to Donald Trump. Many people "claimed by faith" that Trump would win the 2020 election! Having claimed it, their faith doctrine dictates that they must profess that they've received it! And so they repeatedly say, over and over, that Trump actually won!

This is why Kenneth Copeland issued his deranged, maniacal laugh at the reality of Joe Biden's win. You can watch that video here. (I highly recommend it, it's fucked up!) 

This is why Johnny Inlow said recently that God himself Told him that Trump won. Watch that video, here. "I don’t know why the Lord gave me two sets of numbers, but he just says, 'You're not even seeing close to the truth unless you see at least 88 million.' He told me in a weird way: 'If you don’t see at least as many votes as he has followers on Twitter’ — 88.6 million followers on Twitter, and that has been squelched as well. And then the states, he went through just one by one with me and was telling me who was where. And so here’s the big news: California and New York both went red."

It never occurs to Inlow that many of Trump's followers on Twitter are members of the media who want to keep tabs on him, political opponents who want to use his Tweets against him, and comedians who wish to make fun of him. Hell, I'M a follower of Trump on Twitter! That doesn't mean I follow him in real life!

This doctrine is also why members of the clergy held a rally in the National Mall in Washington, D.C., called alternately, "Let the Church ROAR!" or, the "Jericho March."

They won't realize that their faith claim failed until after Biden is sworn in. And a few of them won't accept it even then.

Of course, they will then claim that the faith of the entire Christian Church was insufficient! Because surely, if the faith of only one Christian would be enough (and it would be), then the only solution to the equation is that, like Sodom and Gomorrah, there were none who were truly righteous! No, not one!

They will declare America as lost. Some will even say Biden is the Antichrist.

Some might be shaken loose out of the flock as a result of all this, but I know from experience how difficult that road is. Most will find some new rationale to stay within the faith.

Craziness is not so unusual in Christian circles. I remember many an apocalyptic sermon, preached at West Layton Assembly of God in Greenfield, WI back in the '80's, telling me that we knew the Antichrist was preparing his propaganda network because the cable company ran two cables into everyone's home, but only actually attached one. This, of course, prompted me to check the back of our cable box when I got back home, and I saw, clearly, that both cables, for both the "A" channels and the "B" channels which Viacom offered at the time, were attached.

So much for that one.

I'm reminded of the lesson found in Deuteronomy 13:1-3, which provides a clear guideline for Christians regarding false prophets. "If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, 'Let us follow other gods' (gods you have not known) 'and let us worship them,' you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul."

In other words, if people say "Follow Trump!" instead of "Follow Jesus!" don't do it!

I'm also reminded of the lesson in Matthew 7:21-23. "Not every one that saith unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?' And then will I profess unto them, 'I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.'"

According to the Bible, a majority of Israelites once thought it was a splendid idea to make a golden calf and worship it.

Never was there a golden calf quite so obvious as Donald Trump.

Eric

*

Does Hunter Matter?

 

One thing that comes up over and over again is Hunter Biden, who was hired by the Ukranian oil and gas company, Burisma, to sit on their board of directors, even though he didn't even speak Ukranian. He was paid a $600,000 per year salary to do this, or about 80% above and beyond what a normal executive salary typically is. So he was over-compensated, but not ridiculously so, or at least, not for an oil and gas company.

Would Hunter have been hired had he not been the son of then Vice President Joe Biden? Probably not. But this form of graft has very little influence over lawmakers, even though it's done all the time. I thought I'd share some of my research on other examples where politicians' relatives got a job they probably wouldn't have gotten were it not for their political connections. (You might find this interesting.)

There are lots of high-profile examples. George W. Bush was made an oil executive through this father's connections, and was remarkably bad at it. His brother, Neil Bush, probably wouldn't have been on the board of Silverado Savings and Loan in the 1980's were it not for the fact that George H.W. Bush was Vice President at the time, and that came back to bite him in 1988 when the Savings & Loan scandal exploded. George W. Bush's daughter, Barbara Bush, was given a job at Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum, possibly due to her high connections (although having a degree from Yale didn't hurt). And, of course, Chelsea Clinton was handed any number of jobs thanks to her status as the Fist Daughter, including a largely symbolic role as a "special correspondent" for NBC News. She took on her current role as board member of the Clinton Foundation when all those jobs washed out for her. And let's not forget that her mother, Hillary Clinton, made history by becoming one of the first ever female corporate executives by getting named to the board of Walmart - but, of course, that only happened because her husband, Bill, was the governor of Arkansas at the time. (Walmart is headquartered in Arkansas.)

There's little doubt that the only reason Megan McCain got on "The View" was because she's John McCain's daughter. There's also little doubt that the status of New York Mayor, Andrew Cuomo, has helped to bolster the career of his younger brother, Chris Cuomo, on CNN, and that both their careers were assisted by their father, Mario Cuomo. Just about every job Rand Paul ever had before running for office himself came through his father, Ron Paul. Mike Reagan, the adopted son of former president Ronald Reagan, was made a talk radio show host due largely to his family connections.

It was once falsely reported that Nancy Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi, Jr., was on the board of a Ukranian-influenced energy company, similar to Hunter Biden. That story turned out to be false. But he was appointed to the board of an energy company in America called Viscoil. Paul left the board in 2010. But it's a good bet that he got on the board in the first place, in part, because his mother was Speaker of the House. (It was long afterward that Viscoil dissolved, re-formed itself in Singapore, and only then did some limited lab-based business with Ukranian interests.)

Everyone remembers JFK. Few people remember that when he named his brother, Bobby Kennedy, Attorney General, people shouted, "Nepotism!" They claimed that RFK was too young, and too inexperienced. Of course, they made the same argument about JFK, too.

Sometimes the assist goes the other way, with a career boost coming by outright opposition to a political relative. For example, Caroline Rose Giuliani received a huge career boost by standing opposed to her father, Rudy Giuliani, and endorsing the Biden/Harris ticket. Caroline is a filmmaker. Mitch McConnell's daughter, Porter McConnell, has built her career on liberal activism in opposition to her Senate-Majority-Leading father. Or George Conway, the husband of Trump staffer Kellyanne Conway, receiving a huge career assist in founding The Lincoln Project thanks to his notorious marital connection, and his outspoken opposition to Trump in spite of it.

Here in Wisconsin, former governor Scott Walker's son, Alexander Walker, was handed a job as an account representative at Uline while he was in between his roles as a campaign director and later at Turning Point USA in 2019. His role at Uline only lasted 3 months, February through April, according to his LinkedIn page, and Dick and Liz Uihlein, the owners of Uline, are notoriously outspoken Republicans who loudly supported Scott Walker, and later Donald Trump.

Senator Ron Johnson's children were bailed out of investment difficulty when they invested in a historic building in Oshkosh, yet filed the paperwork incorrectly when seeking a tax break to offset their renovation costs. Anybody else probably would have been told, 'Tough luck!' Or, at least, tough luck for this fiscal year. But Johnson's children got the tax break anyway after a series of emails told Wisconsin officials whose kids they were dealing with. (Okay, that's a small item, but it counts.)

And let's not forget how Governor Tommy Thompson's brother, Ed Thompson, got in trouble with the law regarding marijuana possession. His big brother got him out of that jam. And later, Ed Thompson ran for governor himself on the Libertarian ticket. His platform? Legalize marijuana!

Full disclosure: I have to include my own family in this one. My wife landed an internship with the Senatorial campaign of Russ Feingold when she dropped the name of her grandfather - State Senator Joseph Andrea of Kenosha. She was hired without an interview.

Look, it's not wrong to have connections. It's not wrong to exploit them. Often times, it's who you know, not how good you are. But let's not pretend that those connections necessarily mean that those you are connected to are corrupt.

Yes, Hunter got paid $600,000 per year. Yes, that's sketchy as shit. But unless someone can show evidence that one single penny of it went to his father, Joe, it doesn't mean jack.

Especially when Hunter's biggest critics are Eric Trump, Don Jr., and Ivanka - and one doesn't need to look far to see how they have financially benefited through their political connections!

Eric

*

Dan O'Donnell Goes Off The Deep End Too

I'm not sure what happened to Dan O'Donnell in recent years, but it's become quite clear that he's gone bat-shit insane.

He didn't used to be that way. In fact, he is a two-time winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award. He used to be the guy on WISN who offset some of the insanity of Jay Weber, Vicki McKenna, and Mark Belling.

Apparently, not anymore.

But before I get into that, let me go off on a tangent about something somewhat related. I finally have access to HBO Max, despite having an older Roku player. I managed a work-around using Hulu's extended features, and a little bit of hard-wiring on my laptop. This has given me full access not only to wonderful shows like Raised by Wolves (which I highly recommend), but also many classic HBO features, such as (and this is my main point) The Newsroom.

The Newsroom was a masterpiece by screenwriter-extraordinaire Aaron Sorkin, who gave us such gems as The American President, The Contender, The Social Network, and of course, The West Wing. It was about a cable news channel whose main prime-time figurehead, Will McAvoy, goes from being an apolitical ratings whore to a stalwart Walter-Cronkite-like figure who stands up for the Truth, ratings be damned. The show featured real-life news events which added to the gravitas of the plot, and Sorkin's amazing dialogue made this particular newsroom - an environment which moves fast even on slow days - move even faster.

Anyway, the reason I'm prattling on about this is that it makes me acutely aware of how obvious the problems with the media were - even back in January of 2011, when the pilot episode of The Newsroom first aired on HBO. Competing cable news channels actually  jockeyed with themselves, not only to get the early scoop, but also to get the story right! Again and again, the triumph of the plot was getting the story straight, in spite of massive corporate pressure to capitulate to the whims of executive management.

And it breaks my heart to see what media has become today. Major news networks, like Fox News, allow themselves to be scooped repeatedly, time and again, by reporting false news, and not only does nobody over there seem to give a shit, they actually encourage that sort of thing! "This is our fake story, and we're sticking with it!" Because ratings, not truth, is the ultimate ruler of content!

"You shouldn't get to have your news your way - like it's an order at Burger King," as Will McAvoy would say.

And yes, the truth is boring. "Nobody is going to want to watch the Will McAvoy makes you eat your vegetables show," as the ratings gurus scold the main character. But damn it all, the truth matters!

Or, at least, it used to.

Which leads me back to Dan O'Donnell. He used to have more integrity

Not anymore. Now, he's just as nuts as everybody else on WISN.

He wrote an article for the MacIver Institute which was published yesterday, in which he railed against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn for NOT legislating from the bench! (Or, more precisely, in not legislating from the bench in the way that HE preferred!) For not giving the craziness a hearing! For not allowing the boneheaded lawsuit brought by the Trump campaign to threaten to throw out a free an fair election won by Joe Biden in Wisconsin! You can read the article for yourself, here.

Charlie Sykes, who has known Dan O'Donnell for years, and even occasionally shared air time with him, probably referenced O'Donnell in his podcast yesterday on The Bulwark:

"I have to tell ya, right before we started this, I'm reading an article by a guy in the conservative - in the right-wing media, here in Wisconsin who I've known for years and years and years. Smart guy, I actually lobbied for him to get a job at one point, hard-working, and he's gone completely bat-shit crazy. Not only supporting all the conspiracy theories about the election in Wisconsin (and there was nothing wrong with the election in Wisconsin, we've had a recount, there's no evidence, Joe Biden won this, it's decisive, it's not really in question) he's not only defending that he's attacking the Supreme Court Justice, the conservative justice, who said, 'Yeah, we're not taking a case that is gonna to throw out the election, that's gonna throw away the votes of millions of Wisconsinites, and just turn the electoral college votes over to Donald Trump.' And so this guy is not only defending the bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories, he's attacking the judge who did the right thing. And I'm going, 'How did this happen? I mean, is there - did somebody put these "red" pills in everybody's coffee a few years ago?'"

Charlie graciously doesn't mention O'Donnell by name, but by process of elimination, it's pretty clear that's who he's probably talking about. The other WTMJ radio bigwigs, Jeff Wagner and Steve Scaffidi, are both in agreement that Joe Biden Won. O'Donnell was one of the radio personalities on WTMJ for a decade, sharing occasional time in the booth with Charlie Sykes before moving to WISN in 2013. (O'Donnell finally got his own radio show on WISN in 2016.) Charlie clearly states he's reading "an article," and the only such article written with this subject matter was done by Dan O'Donnell. So that's undoubtedly who he was talking about.

And Charlie is right. What DID happen?

What happened was the Right-Wing Media Cult consolidated behind Trump. The corporate sponsorship of the Right Wing Media Cult did nothing to stop it. In fact, encouraged it. The oligarchy which once was our democracy was ill-equipped to deal with this new challenge - and news challenge. That's what. And O'Donnell, caught up in the whirlwind of it, has become brain-hacked by it, just like so many others.

The scary part about the ruling in the Wisconsin Supreme Court regarding Trump's lawsuit wasn't that it failed, or that Brian Haggedorn sided with the more liberal judges in ruling against it. The scary part was that it failed by a 3-4 vote!

Think about that! Three to goddamned four! O'Donnell shouldn't be railing against Haggedorn, he should be railing against the three other so-called judges who felt that throwing out an entire state's election was an idea worth considering! This should have been a 0-7 unanimous vote! It was a no-brainer! The fact that three, count them, THREE, Supreme Court justices felt that undermining an election was somehow a good idea, should scare the living shit out of each and every one of us!

And O'Donnell thinks the problem is Haggedorn!

No, the problem is that the same thing that hacked O'Donnell's brain also hacked that of three powerful judges!

Truth matters! It matters in news, and it matters in life. We need to recognize that truth comes before any candidate. Truth comes before Party, it comes before religion, it comes before family, it comes before our nation.

Truth outweighs all of it! Because Truth is more valuable.

If you have nothing but Truth, you are wealthy. And when faced with accepting Truth or losing everything else, you should always choose Truth! Because there is no greater poverty than living with a comfortable illusion!

The plague of our era is that people are 100% convinced that the opposite is true.

In this nation, we have become endeared to the philosophy that one can choose one's own truth. Somewhat like what Guinan said in Star Trek: The Next Generation, when she said, "I believe truth is in the eye of the beholder."

To which Ensign Ro says, "Isn't that supposed to be, 'beauty?'"

"Truth, beauty, it works for a lot of things," Guinan answers.

With all due respect to Whoopi Goldberg, and the entire Star Trek franchise, bullshit! There is only ONE truth! And if it disagrees with your politics, or your religion, (or your favorite science fiction show,) or any other illusion you might have, TOO BAD!

You will find, as I have, that Truth is more precious than any of those other things!

The news, once upon a time, recognized that simple fact. Edward R. Murrow, whose namesake award went to Dan O'Donnell twice, recognized that fact. Walter Cronkite recognized that fact. And the all-too-fictional Will McAvoy recognized that fact.

I long for those days to return.

Eric

*

Rush Limbaugh Utterly Fails To Show Fraud

 

By now, the routine is starting to get old. 1) Right Wing Media Cult claims it has evidence of fraud in the election. 2) Said "evidence" is presented. 3) "Evidence" turns out not to indicate fraud after all. 4) Right Wing Media Cult turns to something else.

Case in point: the recent fraud claim in Georgia, the one allegedly about "suitcases full of ballots" being counted as soon as Republican poll watchers left, was claimed by Rush Limbaugh to finally be the "big one," according to him. It was, he said, the smoking gun which proves that some election fraud did actually take place.

Or was it?

See the video for yourself, here.

Here's how Rush Limbaugh described it on his show last Friday. "Folks, there is so much happening here with this election fraud story, that it has been a challenge for me - 'cause I've been somewhat distracted the past week, even longer than that - a challenge even for me to put all these pieces together. So, the first question: What the hell is that Georgia video? It's amazing! Can it be explained away by the Left? I don't think they can explain this away. And who are these people in the video? Well, we now know the name of one of the people in the video. This is the suitcase video; suitcase, underneath the table video. When all the Republican monitors are gone, here come the suitcases! With all the ballots! And we now know the name of one of the people engaged in this. This is exactly, this' exactly the kind of evidence that we need, and we need it pronto! We are running out of time, here!"

Well, Rush is right about that last part. They are running out of time! And it's interesting that Rush has inadvertently admitted that all the previous evidence was FALSE by jumping so eagerly onto this particular story, saying, in effect, 'Aha! Now we finally got 'em!'

Okay. So you didn't "get 'em" before, eh? Thanks for saying so! We always knew you'd come around, eventually.

In fact, a little bit later on in the program, Trump outright said as much. 

"I got a note from Rudy," he said, referring to Rudy Giuliani (of course). "Rudy said, 'You know, you really deflated us that day.' I said, 'Oh, no, I didn't want to deflate you.' 'You did! When you said that we had to come up with some bombshells...' I said, 'Rudy, I just looked at the press conference is all I did, and you'd made it look like you had a whole bunch of 'em lying in wait... for that press conference. You and Sydney at the ti - well, primarily it was Sydney at the time - you guys got through, I was thinking, "Here comes the proof!" I was all jazzed! I was thinking, "This is it! They've got it!" And then, there wasn't "it." And, a little deflating to me, too. I wasn't trying to deflate you guys, I wasn't trying to depress you, I'm just saying, this is how I saw it. And I'm probably not the only one who saw it that way. I mean, the things that were said in that press conference, about the fraud, and the proof of it, and how deeply it went, and how much of it there was, I fully expected somebody to join that press conference with the evidence. Somebody involved in it. That didn't happen. So that's why - now I was expecting bombshells, and I didn't get any bombshells, and when I didn't get any bombshells,' he says 'Whoah.' And that's when Rudy said a, now kinda, 'That was very deflating, especially from you.' Well, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to deflate anybody. I'm just - sharing with everybody my reaction to it."

You know, you just gotta love it when even Rush Limbaugh departs from the dogma, inadvertently admits the truth, and then tries to go back to pretending there's actual fraud going on as if nothing happened.

Meanwhile, back to the earlier part of Rush's Friday program, where he insists that the "suitcase" footage from Atlanta's State Farm Arena somehow proves that there was fraud.

"Somebody's gonna have to come forward and either claim they were just counting stored, legal votes, or tell us what the con was and who ordered it," Limbaugh goes on. "This is - it, it's gonna have to happen this way. The smoking gun video! How long have we been told, folks, that the Trump team has no evidence of voter fraud. We've been told this since the first allegation of it was made. Despite the hundreds of sworn affidavits, the hours of sworn testimony before legislatures in Georgia, Nevada and elsewhere, and how about all of these people testifying - you know, C-SPAN's had it, all kinds of television networks have had these people, average ordinary Americans, coming forward and explaining, the witnesses - they're explaining what they saw. It has been fantastic to watch, if you're into the civics aspect of this. They have been giving testimony before legislatures in Georgia, Nevada and elsewhere, and now we have a smoking gun. Or rather, smoking suitcases.... Media, rest of the Democrats, still saying there's no evidence. Do they even know what 'evidence' means? Yes, of course they know what 'evidence' means. They're lying through their teeth about it."

Well, except, no. The Democrats and "the Media" are not "lying through their teeth" about anything. Someone did come forward and claim that only stored, legal votes were being counted. That person was Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager, and a Republican. You can see his disclaimer, here.

If you look at the video, it does show poll workers removing a few storage cases (not "suitcases") from below a black-colored table and continuing to count when it appears all the poll watchers have left. But the cases are not "hidden," because there's no skirt covering the table. Those bins would have been visible to every poll watcher the whole time. Also, there were observers present, just not as many. There was one election board monitor from the state, and members of the media were still present as well. Some poll watchers and workers had left, but not all. This was confirmed by Frances Watson, the Georgia secretary of state's chief investigator. She did this by sworn affidavit. And yes, I've been critical of sworn affidavits recently, but this woman is the chief investigator for exactly such matters, and that carries a lot more weight than some contractor driving a truck (see previous post).

Also, (here's MY big point), everybody there knew they were on security camera! If they were going to commit vote fraud, wouldn't they, you know, TURN THE CAMERAS OFF?! Okay, maybe that might look more suspicious, but I can't help but be convinced that there's just NO WAY anyone would be willing to commit voter fraud on camera!

There are bins seen, they are removed, their contents get counted. But does the camera show that these ballots are all for Biden? No. Hell, they might all have been for Trump, for all we know! Most likely, they contained some of both.

Plus, by now, the count has been gone over three times. Once in the initial election count, once in the recount, and once again in the recent audit. If these ballots, which were scrutinized three times over, were fraudulent, at least one of them would have been caught.

Not one of them was.

Last but not least, this story was debunked by - FOX NEWS! Yes, after initially reporting that it was a big deal, Griff Jenkins reported on Fox & Friends that he'd spoken with a senior source in the office of secretary of state Brad Raffensberger, who said that there was a designated observer present the entire time. He said the source had "seen this video and they’re familiar with the claims; they said that they’re simply not true. The suggestion that Georgia vote counters were sent home and ballots were brought in in suitcases, also not true. And that what appears is reported as suitcases are actually the normal containers that ballots are put in."

True, afterward, Fox News went back to ballyhooing the story as though there were anything to it, but it's interesting how Fox vacillated from "True!" to "Not true!" and then back to "True!" again.

So once again, big fucking deal.

That should have been the end of it. But the Right Wing Media Cult, ever so eager for this to finally be their "gotcha!" moment, refused to let it go quite that easily. Even after yet another embarrassment. 

Come Monday, on my lunch break, I casually tuned in to Rush's program on my car radio, just in case Rush would have anything else to say about the phony claim he'd made on Friday. At the very least, he would have the opportunity to backpedal and admit that this footage does not constitute proof of anything.

Unsurprisingly, he doubled down.

"Remember we had the story - the video of the suitcases being pulled out from under tables, after the election observers had been sent home, the election observers were told, 'nothing to see here, you guys can go home, we're not going to count any more ballots tonight,' so the election observers left. And then those suitcases were dragged out from underneath the table. And the votes, there were 6,000 ballots inside each suitcase, and they - that's a total of 24,000. They were counted after the observers were sent home. Well, numerous officials in Georgia said, 'No, no, no, no, that's not what happened. And they're not suitcases they - they were in - in the normal containers that are used for these. There nothing to see here.' And they then proceeded to totally debunk - there's a video that was taken by Jackie Pick, is her name, and everybody resorted to using the video, and they debunked that - and Molly's piece here says 'No, the Georgia vote counting video was not debunked, not even close. A big-tech-backed fact-checking outfit claimed to debunk explosive evidence for Republican claims of significant election problems in Georgia. It didn't, not even close. So, here's the - I can get to the - cut to the chase of this. The Democrats have opposed, and have fought like banshees, against all responsible election protections for at least the last decade. Now that's - that's one of the starting points for this. This is an undeniable reality of our current election system. They have pushed, they have shamed, they have lied into, they have same-day registration, motor-voter, no-signature-verification, mail-in ballots, ballot-harvesting, those kind of things I'm talking about. It used to be we had election day. And it used to be we could all vote on election day. And every one of those votes magically ended up being counted. And by midnight, 2 o'clock in the morning, we had a winner! And magically, everybody accepted it! And the Democrats didn't like the fact that they were losing some. So they began to toy with and tamper with the system. Same-day registration. You know the problem with that: There's no way to verify that somebody is who they say they are. It was clearly an attempt to - get rid of a particular protection. A fraud. And the next thing that came along: motor-voter! Oh, yeah! Because everybody has to get their car registered.... Then, they attempted no signature verification. On absentee ballots, and - and, uh, and mail-in ballots. Then the mail-in ballots got big news, and that because of Covid, mail-in ballots were given all kinds of promotion, people were led to believe that it was gonna be scary, you could die if you show up at a polling place on election day. The way to stay alive, the way to save yourself, is by mail-in voting... And people used it. They used that, and early voting... Early voting is another attempt at tampering with election systems."

Oh, what a bunch of bullshit! You verify someone is the person they say they are with same-day registration with a simple thumb-print! But Republicans don't seem to want that! And since when did Democrats ever push for no-signature verification? Trump claimed this back in October, and PolitiFact debunked him right away! And absentee ballots and mail-in ballots have been around for over a hundred years! They've been proven reliable, and are the primary way service members and even entire states cast their vote!

And that's before we get into all the ways Republicans have fucked with the vote - with everything from gerrymandering (which steals votes by the millions!), to requiring I.D.'s and then relocating the departments which create said I.D. way, way out in the suburbs where minorities can't get to them, to outright, blatantly, fucking with the Post Office! If Limbaugh thinks he has any moral high ground here, he's Alice living in Wonderland!

"On Friday morning, a group called - that's last Friday - a group called Lead Stories - you ever heard of 'em? - they published a hoax alert. Oh, yeah. And they falsely claimed to have debunked this security video that was released that showed these suitcases being dragged out from underneath the table, after the Republican election observers had been sent home. [recording garbled] ... Fact Check says government officials told them everything was fine with the counting. The ballots were in containers, not suitcases. Remember that? 'Naw, they were in the right - they were in the right containers. The- the-there's nothing to see here. The suitcase was - just what the people that deal with this - that's just what they call them. And the party observers were never told to leave, because counting was over for the night, didn't happen. They just left on their own."

Now, Limbaugh had more to say, which was difficult to make out because the podcast got garbled in a couple more places. He was apparently taking issue with the claim that observers somehow left on their own, and that nobody was told to leave. Okay, fine. But then he goes on with this:

"It gets difficult to follow because the zone is so flooded with data, that you don't know what to glom onto, what to believe, what not to believe. But even in Georgia, there are much bigger claims than even this! For example, uh, Trump and state Republican chairman David Schaeper - state Republican chairman, Georgia - filed a criminal complaint in state court Friday regarding tens of thousands of votes they say were fraudulent...."

Did you see it? Limbaugh started out with a big attempt at a story, saying that the fact checking of Lead Stories (among others), was wrong, began to realize that he had nothing solid, gave zero reasons why the debunking was wrong, muttered something about how it's difficult to know what's out there in the data flood, and then just pushed on to the next fraud claim!

WHAT?! I mean, come on! What happened to "the big one?!" What happened to "the smoking gun?!" What happened to "I don't know how they can explain this away?!"

Jesus fucking Christ, Rush! After doubling down, you could at least try!

He is trying, actually. But he isn't trying to get to the bottom of the truth regarding one particular story. If he did that, he's discover how it debunks his biases and would force him into changing his views. Instead what he's trying to do is throw anything at the wall he can find in the hopes that some of it will stick. It's a tactic which has been used successfully by creationists, flat-earthers, holocaust deniers and UFO enthusiasts for decades! And, unfortunately, it seems to work with Rush Limbaugh's audience, as well.

Rush blew it so badly with his denial-and-pivot regarding the "suitcases" story, that I could leave this blog post right here. But he said lots of other crap earlier in the broadcast, so I thought I'd throw in some "bonus" debunking, too. Check this out:

Earlier in that same broadcast, Rush laid out some of his best reasons for believing why Trump actually won. He played recordings of the recent Trump rallies in Georgia, and argued that people don't cheer so loudly for a loser, or for a losing team. "Nobody greets the losing Superbowl team at the airport," is how he put it. So he concludes from this that people intrinsically know that Trump won. This, of course, is like arguing that because most Jehovah's Witnesses stayed within the cult after Jesus failed to show up in 1977 that there must be something to it, and I don't need to tell you how silly that line of reasoning is.

"Trump grew his support among black supporters by 50% from 2016," Limbaugh says. Except that Trump only won 8% of the black vote in 2016. Double that and you get only 16%. That means he lost the black vote by 84%. And that's like the football team that went 1 and 15 the previous year, saying "We doubled our victories this year! The franchise is moving in a positive direction!" But of course, 2 and 14 still SUCKS!

And besides that, it's wrong. The best estimates of how Trump did with African Americans show that he only achieved 12% of the vote. That's 50% better than in 2016, but it's hell and gone not as good as double! The most accurate and most recent reporting on these demographics comes from the BBC. You can read that report here.

"Nationally, Joe Biden's black support fell well below 90%," Limbaugh continues. "That's a level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose. That's why we say, if the Democrat gets something under 90 - 85% loses 10 to 15% they're in trouble."

Except that in a record turnout year, the white and Latino vote makes up for that. And 88% is not "well below 90%," nor is it below the threshold of "something under 90-85%."

"Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35%"

Wrong. It was 32% at most. Fivethirtyeight.com says Trump only won 27%.

"Now with 60% or less of the national Hispanic vote it is arithmetically impossible for a Democrat presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico." (Limbaugh pronounces "New Mexico" as "New Meh-HEE-co," completely oblivious of how racially insensitive that sounds.)

This is spectacularly wrong. First, Biden didn't win Florida, now did he? And he DID win 60% of the Latino vote. He also won at least that percentage in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin and just about everywhere else. The reason he lost Florida, and possibly Texas, was because Cuban-Americans resonated strongly with Trump's anti-socialist message, which successfully cast Biden's agenda as being sympathetic to the legacy of Fidel Castro. According to the election's reported results in Florida, Trump edged out a win among Florida Latinos by about 52.5%. But Biden won Latinos by about 70%! This according to estimates by NBC, and CNN. This is confirmed by a fivethirtyeight.com article which reports that Trump only won 27% of Latino votes this year. That's an improvement from 17% in 2016, but that's still low overall. In Maricopa County, Arizona, home to 60% of Arizona's total population, precincts with high concentrations of Latino voters voted 75% for Biden. That's a 3 to 1 margin! So it's simply ridiculous for Limbaugh to claim that Biden's vote total among Latinos was less than 60%. Not even close!

"Bellweather states then swung further in Trump's direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America's media polls with big wins for Trump. Now we're also told that Biden won more votes nationally than any other presidential candidate in history. But at the same time, he won a record low of 17% of counties. He only won 523 counties as opposed to the 873 counties that Obama won in 2008. Yet Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes? Now, a lot of people have focused on this, because this one is glaring."

No, it's not. Because number of counties has very little to do with number of votes. Cook County alone (Chicago) has more people in it than all the rest of Illinois, plus a few other states! In 2008, a lot of Republicans stayed home, and Obama won more counties as a result. This year, counties with big cities had extra big turnouts, and that led to more overall votes for Biden. That's not difficult to figure out.

"Late on election night with Trump comfortably ahead, and by comfortably ahead we're talking like 800,000 votes in Pennsylvania, many swing states stopped counting ballots, at roughly the same time. Just incredible. In most states, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers. What the hell?! Now we all know this. And everybody involved is denying that it happened, and they're saying  there's no way it happened, and they'll make a big deal, and nothing, and even Republicans in these states, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, it didn't happen.' But it did! The counting was stopped! The observers were kicked out! They were not allowed back in, they weren't allowed close enough to see what was being done."

Incorrect, and Limbaugh knows it! Were some observers kicked out? Yes! Because they were being disruptive assholes! Were ALL Republican observers kicked out? HELL, NO! And deep down, Limbaugh knows this! But he lies to himself about it so that he can continue lying to others!

Limbaugh is reading off of a list provided by some person named Patrick Basham, because Rush can't come up with all this shit on his own. "#2," he says, "Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed."

Well, since the uncounted areas were major metropolitan centers, such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Atlanta, that makes all kinds of sense. And the vote-counting centers were forced to close in order to deal with hordes of irrational Trump supporters who showed up looking to start trouble! They had to pause to set up a perimeter. They had to set up a system of getting the volunteers in and out. And they had to make sure enough police were present to maintain order. If the vote count in the big cities was showing unusually large totals for Biden, so what? It's normal for big-city vote counts to lean heavily Democrat! Rush is using this well-known demographic to build a phony case.

"In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89% of the votes counted. 'Kay, no big deal there, that's ju- that's the starting point. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same, exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin, in every single batch! So Trump begins losing to Biden with 89% of the votes counted, for the next 53 batches of votes. And every batch has a different number of votes in them. They're coming in from all over the place. Throughout the state."

This is directly out of Patrick Basham's website, the so-called "Democracy Institute." You can read his article here.

How does Patrick know that the last 53 batches had this margin? He fails to tell us. How does he know that the percentages were 50.05% to 49.95%? Again, he provides us with nothing. No anecdotes, no witnesses, no citation whatsoever.

No corroborating information, no citation, no reference - NO ARGUMENT.

Of course Basham is the same idiot who claimed to have earned a PhD. from Cambridge when in reality he dropped out. So he's not exactly the most honest of English blokes to begin with.

And this moron represents Limbaugh's BEST attempt at showing voter fraud!

I'll leave it there, for now. It's so bizarre that Limbaugh thinks this pile of crap makes much of a case. But then, you don't need much to convince someone who wants to believe something.

All you really need to do is cast enough doubt about the other side's position.

Eric

*

Belling Builds A Potential Retreat From Trump

 

Sometimes, Mark Belling comes soooo close to figuring out on his own.

And then... completely falls on his ass again.

Case in point was Belling's broadcast last Wednesday afternoon. He opened the program by pointing out, quite correctly, that people tend to bend the evidence they perceive according to their own preset beliefs.  "People believe what they want to believe," he says. For example, according to him, if people believe there was fraud in the 2020 presidential election, then they will see evidence of fraud whether or not it actually counts as evidence of fraud or not. By contrast, those who say there was zero fraud will be inclined to dismiss any fraud claims, regardless of their merit. This is how he mis-casts the Left, as people saying that there was no fraud whatsoever.

Now, we all know that's simply not true. What "the Left" is saying, along with the Center, and the Center-Right, and even some on the Far-Right, is that no election is ever done without some irregularities, but those irregularities simply do not amount to enough of a case to overturn the actual election results. There just isn't enough actual evidence to conclude that the election victory should be snatched away from Joe Biden and handed over to Donald Trump.

Mark doesn't acknowledge that. He says, "On the one hand you have some people who jus - they'll just claim - there's no fraud. I don't mean a little - NONE! Give me a break! We already know of some fraud. We've caught some people double-voting. I don't know how it got to be that Ozaukee County became the hellhole for elections in the state of Wisconsin. I blame you for this. Paul I just generally blame you for this. I know - I just like blaming you for things."

Again, Mark shits on his producer and call-screener, Paul, who has been taking abuse from Belling for nearly three decades without ever being given a microphone with which to defend himself. Paul lives in Mequon, you see. That's why Mark is "blaming" Paul for any voter fraud in Ozaukee. And I know, Mark isn't being serious. But Paul is loooong overdue to be handed a microphone! Three solid decades it's been, "Paul says this," or "Paul says that!" How about we let Paul speak for his own, goddamned self?!

But I digress.

Mark's claim of voter fraud in Ozaukee comes from the news story of a older woman in Cedarburg, whose life-partner, another woman, requested an absentee ballot back in May, but then died in July. Apparently, this woman completed the absentee ballot, signed as a witness, and sent the ballot in. She dated it for September. This caught the attention of an Ozaukee poll worker who recognized the name as someone recently deceased. Ozaukee police later charged her with a felony.

Mark says there were two instances of fraud. This is incorrect. The same story was reported twice. Once, on November 16 when the suspected fraud was found, and once again after the woman involved was actually charged. Mark saw the first story, then concluded after the follow-up to the same story that there were two people charged with fraud. Not quite. Although the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that there were two crimes - one a misdemeanor and the other a felony - that is not the same as two people charged, or even two instances of fraud. There was only one.

And from this, Mark concludes that Ozaukee county is "a hellhole for elections." Sheesh!

Mark's sloppy reporting aside, he pivots to the issue of Dominion voting systems. "Ozaukee County also used Dominion voting systems. That doesn't make them unique, but when I see evidence piled on top of evidence piled on top of evidence, it makes one suspicious!"

Really? "Evidence piled on top of evidence?" One voter in Ozaukee?

"Anybody who says there was no fraud is lying. We already know there are cases of fraud. People are being criminally charged. In addition to that, there are numerous irregularities that are out there that require an explanation, and fraud is a possible explanation."

But after that (watch this), Mark strangely backpedals!

"But then," Mark says, "on the other hand, there are people running around, foaming at the mouth, claiming everything is fraud! Without proof of many of the things that they claim are fraud! In other words, people that make the same mistake on the opposite side! In both cases they are believing what they want to believe. Some people want to believe that Donald Trump won by 20 million votes and the only reason that the numbers don't show that is because there's fraud. And because that's what they want to believe, they believe it! Then there are others who want to believe that there was no fraud anywhere in the United States, that this was the most honest election of all time, that we ought to just stand up like we're all a bunch of boy scouts, we did a spectacular job, there wasn't a single thing amiss. And because they want to believe that, that's what they believe!"

Holy shit. Did Belling actually give - a balanced opinion?!

He did! And in so doing, he's leaving himself an avenue of retreat. He's making it possible for him to say, "I never said there was outright fraud. I only expressed concern about the many irregularities out there."

He's also become one of the growing number of ultra-conservatives out there who are calling out their own party's bullshit. He describes them as "running around, foaming at the mouth." How refreshing! Might we be able to add Mark Belling to the "Bill-Barr-reality-acknowledgement list?"

Well, not quite. Because Belling is still Belling, and he's still, ultimately, a crackpot.

"Now, let me start to move toward where I'm going, here, which is in the middle of those two comments. Let's imagine you're one of those people who wants to believe there was zero fraud. That's what you want to believe. That's your great desire in life. 'I want to believe there's no fraud.' If somebody gives you evidence of fraud, are you going to look into it? NO! Why would you? You want to believe there was no fraud, so why would try to find fraud if you want to believe there was no fraud?"

Well, I'm looking into it, Mark. How do you explain me?

"There are red flags all over Dominion. But - just because there are red flags, and just because there are things that are suspicious, doesn't mean that anything actually was amiss."

Strange. There he goes again! A balanced perspective.

"But there are people that are just ruling it out out of hand. 'Well you have no proof that anything bad happened with Dominion.' I know! You won't let me look into it! You all might want to look into it! Why don't we look into it! If you're so convinced there's nothing bad there, what the hell are you afraid of in looking into it!"

Again, I'm looking into it. And I'm not the only one who's doing so! I'm not the only one on the Left acknowledging irregularities and weird occurrences. EVERY election has such SNAFUs, because it's impossible to have 160 million people casting ballots without some oddball things happening.

Now, Mark goes off on Dominion itself, wondering aloud, "Who OWNS Dominion?"

A fair question. But a fairer question might be, regardless of who owns Dominion, would that matter? I mean, if it turned out to be owned by one of Vladimir Putin's oligarchs, maybe. Or Michael Bloomberg. But even then, does ownership prove actual interference?

It does not. But that doesn't keep Mark from speculating. See, the point isn't to actually have solid evidence. The point is to throw anything out there to create as much doubt about the election as possible. Yes, Mark is leaving himself an avenue of retreat, and giving himself plausible deniability when it inevitably is proven, yet again, that Biden won the election. But he's still working for Team Trump.

Mark actually investigates the ownership of Dominion fairly well. There are multiple conglomerates and subsidiaries who have stakes in Dominion, and Mark finds some of those connections.

"Now, here we have these questions being raised about Dominion, and a guy like me asks, 'Who owns Dominion?' and no one seems to be able to answer. There have been a number of reports over the last few days in which people have tried to go back and find this out, and they are finding that Dominion seems to have a lot of different owners that have a lot of different names, and many of them have been bought or sold relatively recently.... Was Dominion ever owned and controlled by forces in the Communist Venezuelan government? Well, there's some indication of that! We don't know who owns it now because it appears that Dominion is buried in 19 different shell companies in which various of the shells have been bought and sold. Again, very curious."

Really, Mark? You just got done preaching about how people believe what they want to believe, and you then conclude, simply because there is a "shell game" behind various corporations, that one of them must tie back to Venezuela? Really?

"There is something we can tell you, because it's been reported in the media.... One of the parent companies of Dominion voting systems [big pause] is named Staples, St. Capital. Staples St. Capital acquired Dominion in 2018. And again, as I say, Dominion keeps getting sold. And, there's these different corporations, and the company that buys it always seems to be owned by somebody else. So we know that Staples St. Capital owns a majority interest in Dominion. On October 8th 2020 - I didn't say 452 years ago, this is less than two months ago - Staples St. Capital filed an SEC form, Form D. Form D is where you list any sales activity that has gone on with your company. It listed it as being in the amount of 400 million dollars. It said that it got 400 million dollars as it sold the company, the receipt came from UBS Securities. So now we know that UBS Securities, in October, one month before the election, bought Staples St. Capital, and Staples St. Capital owned a majority of Dominion. UBS Securities - you know - where they're based? I'm tellin' ya! I don't want to sound like a crackpot or a weirdo. I'm just telling you stories that are out there in the news right now. I don't want this to sound like Art Bell or George Noory."

Too late.

"It's an investment bank, UBS Securities. You may have heard of them. They own Payne Weber. They were one of the companies involved with Payne Weber a number of years ago. Anyway, UBS. You know where they're based? Switzerland. Where all financial information is secret. UBS Securities owns 24.99 percent of UBS Securities Co., Ltd. UBS Securities Co., Ltd. is not the exact same company as UBS Securities, UBS Securities owns a portion of it. And again, I keep telling you, these companies all own portions of one another. UBS Securities Co., Ltd. is a Chinese investment bank. [BIG pause.] Just ask this, 'Is Dominion owned by the Chinese?' Good grief! Have we lost our marbles? We're letting China count our votes? Gee, China, they're on the up and up! Explain, China, how that virus got out of the Wuhan lab?"

Holy shit. Mark thinks that because a percentage, of a percentage, of a percentage of Dominion is owned by, not China itself, but an investment bank based, only mainly, in China, that China is somehow "counting our votes!" 

There is simply no hyperbole to describe how insane that conclusion is.

And to top it off, Mark adds the conspiracy theory bullshit about the Coronavirus being made in a lab in Wuhan as opposed to the truth of it originating in a wet market in Wuhan. He still thinks that, after a "lab" in China developed the virus, that the Chinese government would somehow, deliberately or accidentally, seed the virus among its own people, first. Or that the secret lab just happened to be in the exact same region where a wet market was.

But Mark again leaves himself an out.

"Again, now there are some people who will take this thing and say, 'See? Dominion thing is corrupt and that's why - that's how Biden stole the election. I'll grant you, I haven't seen any proof that anything amiss happened with any of these Dominion voting machines, I just haven't."

Wow! Way to go, Mark!

"What I have seen, however, is in many of the communities in which the votes are being counted by Dominion, Dominion hired subcontractors, and those - some of those subcontractors are now whistleblowers. Some of them came forward and the - gave statements yesterday, about what was going on in Michigan, raising questions about serious irregularities in the vote counting that went on in Michigan. These people were subcontractors that were hired by Dominion, and Dominion was doing the vote tabulation. Why is anybody - private company, doing the vote tabulation?"

Man. So close, and yet so far.

"Now again, just because the ownership of Dominion appears to have multi-layers, and Dominion appears to be traded around like a baseball card - this is like a fantasy football player, you know, they're going from one, to another, to another, to another, to another, to another, to another, for huge amounts of money, including one sale right before the election, and now, UBS is an - and again, UBS is a giant firm, and UBS has different subsidiaries, and this one particular subsidiary is primarily owned by the Chinese, it could just be an investment vehicle and somebody figured, 'Hey, this company's going to be counting all these votes, it's a good business to be involved in right now. They're going to have a lot of profit if we're gong to - it's a good time to...' Maybe that's all it is. Maybe that's all it is. And maybe nothing bad happened in this election, and...."

Wait for it.

"...maybe Santa really does come down everybody's chimney on Christmas Eve."

There it is. Balanced back to crazy on 0.9 seconds.

"Or maybe there's something worth looking into here."

Okay, I get it. Mark is trying to walk the tightrope between the truth of Biden's victory, which he needs to eventually acknowledge if he is to continue the illusion that he's somehow in the business of telling the truth, and the Trump Cult who desperately needs there to be some reason to discount or disqualify Biden's victory. I get it. It's a tricky needle to thread. And Mark's threading it fairly well. Sort of.

"And I would start with the county that we know that dead people were voting in - Ozaukee. We know that. There's criminal charges out about dead people voting in Ozaukee County. So I want the County Board Chairman, Lee Schlenvogt, to just answer a simple question for me. 'Lee, who owns Dominion?'"

One. We have one case of voter fraud in Cedarburg, Mark. Made by a woman who probably felt she was acting according to the wishes of her dead partner, whose vote would have been 100% legit if she'd simply mailed it before she died in July.

Balance that against the clear attempts by Trump to overturn the election, the decades of gerrymandering, the numerous voter I.D. laws which require nearly-impossible-to-obtain I.D.'s, and the deliberate undermining of the Post Office.

I don't think one Ozaukee voter makes up for all those millions of votes stolen by the Republicans, Mark. I really don't.

"And again, these are not the ravings of somebody who's believing in conspiracies because I have not suggested that this election was stolen. I have said that there are problems here that need to be answered, and I am not ruling out that there was significant corruption in this election, because nobody seems interested in answering any of the questions that many people have, or explaining away many of the irregularities that people, by their own names, witness statements, are raising."

That's his story, and he's sticking with it. That's his exit strategy. 'All I did was raise questions.' And 'nobody seems interested in answering them.'

I'm here, Mark. I'm interested. Come try to convince me.

"There's Chicago, and there's Ozaukee County," Mark says.

Oh, give me a fucking break!

Eric

*

The Glaring "Fraud" Lies of Sean Hannity

 

On Monday night, Sean Hannity admitted what we all knew already.

"I don't vet the information on this program that I give out," he said.

The complete quote was: "This show, we in this hour, I am not told what to say. I don’t vet the information on this program that I give out. We have always been independent, follow our own path on this show. That’s not going to change for me, ever."

Freudian slip, perhaps?

But that blunt admission is not what I want to talk about today, even though I'm going to be repeating and repeating it until the end of time. No, what I want to talk about is the podcast that followed the very next day, in which he spoke regarding election fraud.

For weeks, conservatives who have no evidence have been screaming "Affidavits! Affidavits! Affidavits!" Because that's all they have. But on Hannity's show on Tuesday, he dared to actually broadcast some of the testimony from some of those said affidavits. And he was so thick that he actually thought that they supported his argument. 

He titled his podcast, "Hear The Fraud First Hand." You can hear it yourself, here.

Big mistake. Never allow your lie to be recorded and analyzed!

Hannity speaks of people giving testimony regarding their witnessing of voter fraud. What he's referencing was the Senate hearing in the state of Michigan, in which people who had signed an affidavit were asked to come forward and testify in person as well. Many of these people did over the course of several hours, much to Hannity's delight. So he played some of what they were saying. Unfortunately, he didn't appear to be paying much attention to what they were actually saying, and simply concluded that this was somehow a "preponderance of evidence" regarding voter fraud.

Hannity begins by playing the testimony of a contract truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service (not an actual postal worker), who testified that his trailer contained a bin ("gaylord") filled with absentee mail-in ballots from Bethpage, NY to Harrisburg, PA. After arriving there, at the end of his usual route, he was delayed for six hours before finally being allowed to leave, with a chit guaranteeing him payment for his time. When he returned the following day to get his usual trailer, that trailer was gone. (He went on at length about how much he preferred that trailer, which was usually "his.") Other pro-Trumpers who repeated his story stated how this testimony showed that a truck full of ballots "disappeared." But, of course, it did not "disappear." Merely, this particular truck driver, who was merely a contractor, didn't know who it had been reassigned to. Nor is it clear whether these ballots were largely for Trump or for Biden. Trailer reassignments happen all the time. Big. Fucking. Deal.

Observation: A guy's usual truck-trailer, which contained one bin of mail-in ballots, was not there the following day.

Conclusion: Voter fraud?

Nonsense, of course. This is nothing more than a single person's perspective about how one day's postal routine got disrupted, and about how his favorite trailer got hitched to some other contractor's rig. How is this evidence of voter fraud? It isn't!

Hannity interrupts the truck driver's testimony to play that of a woman who claims that she saw dozens of mail-in military ballots, all of which had the date of "January 1, 1900" as the birth date. When she called this into question, she was rebuffed.

Now, had I been present in that Senate hearing, I would have written out some block letters and asked the woman to read them. Because her eyesight must be in question. I mean, seriously? She expects anyone to believe that she saw a bunch of ballots which had a birth date of "January 1st, 1900" all in a row? Does she really think that anyone who was trying to commit voter fraud would do something that unbelievably stupid? Or obvious?

Undoubtedly, someone in the Senate must have asked her this, because Hannity cut away from that woman, and went to a different witness. This time, it was another contractor with something called United Mailing Service, contracted to deliver US Mail in the state of Wisconsin. (Hannity does not bother to clarify if this Wisconsin driver was testifying in Michigan, or as part of a different case.) He, too, had a testimony of ballots he'd carried which he said had gone "missing" after someone else picked them up. Again, ballots are not "missing" just because some other delivery person got them. But this man testified that US Postal workers were back-dating ballots. Now, whether this was Michigan or Wisconsin, wouldn't matter, because ballots were not allowed to be received after the deadline, regardless of the date on the post-mark. So even if this person's testimony were 100% accurate, it would also be 100% irrelevant, because none of those back-dated ballots would have been counted.

Hannity knows this. But deliberately failed to either inform or remind his listeners about it!

That's called lying.

"Whistleblower," Hannity says instead. "What are your thoughts on this whistleblower? Where's the media on this whistleblower? Media covering this? Most of them are not. Unbelievable."

Hannity, you see, was earlier drawing comparisons between these "whistleblowers" who are testifying regarding "voter fraud" to the whistleblower who informed Congress regarding Donald Trump's attempt to engage in election interference by soliciting the help of the Ukranian government. Hannity does not even consider that individual a real "whistleblower," even referring to him as a "non-whistleblower," and believes that these people, testifying in Michigan, are far more credible.

At this point, he finally goes back to the aforementioned truck driver whose trailer had gone missing, and completes that recorded testimony.

And after that?

He makes an interesting claim. "And as I pointed out yesterday, the numbers... Biden under-performs minorities in every big city, except for Atlanta (Fulton County), Wayne County (Detroit, Michigan), Milwaukee, and Philly, Pennsylvania. Now you got this guy saying what he's saying. This truck driver. 'Well, I just, yeah, I shipped ballots.' *Scoffs.* Unbelievable. Anyone care what he has to say? Media care? Democrats care? No. 'Cause they got the result they wanted. They just want anybody that wants to get to the bottom of it to shut up. And not raise the question. Meanwhile, for four years they never accepted the results of the last election. I love getting lectured by those hypocrites."

Well, Sean, that's because Trump lost the 2016 election too - according to the popular vote!

But wait! Is he right about Biden under-performing with minorities except for the cities he listed? 

As it turns out, no. Biden under-performed Hillary's percentages in Philadelphia. In Milwaukee, according to Politico, Black voter turnout was flat in comparison to 2016. That same article points out that it was the suburbs which really killed Trump. In Milwaukee County, the suburbs of Wauwatosa, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, Fox Point, West Allis, Greenfield and Greendale all went for Biden. The northeast suburbs used to be reliably Red! Same thing for Greenfield and Greendale. Not anymore! This time, they went Blue. Only Hales Corners, Franklin and Caledonia went for Trump. Same thing goes for Wayne, County. Biden didn't gain ground with black voters in Detroit. But the Bolton County suburbs went for Biden! Dearborn, Livonia and Canton flipped Blue.

So again, Hannity is proven wrong.

The one city which did improve for the Democrats was Atlanta. And there, the key influence was not Joe Biden, but rather Stacy Abrams. And again, the margin was not much more in Fulton, County. But it was much higher in neighboring DeKalb.

Biden won these thanks to the white, college-educated vote. Not the black vote.

But Hannity is not deterred by serial failures and bone-headed lies such as these. He continues to spew bullshit on his podcast, particularly towards the final 14 minutes of it, in which he brings some of his "whistleblowers" onto his show.

He plays the testimony of Christina Caromo, playing a segment of her testimony. She tells of a single ballot which had a straight-line party vote for both the Democrat and Republican party-line. Under normal rules, this would be thrown out. But according to the poll worker, this was debatable, and after getting the attention of a few supervisors, they seemed inclined to think that it wasn't clearly a double-party-line vote. They kept asking themselves "what do you think?" This incensed the poll watcher, who challenged it. "What do you THINK?! It doesn't matter what you think, it's the law!" she said. Eventually, they were inclined to give it to the Democrats. When she suggested that it should go to the Republicans instead, she was scolded off. Rightly so! Because as an observer, she can call for the ballot to be excluded, but she cannot advocate for it to be given to the party of her choice! That's illegal too! Perhaps just despite the observer, the supervisor on site told the poll worker to push the ballot through.

Hannity does not bother to point out that, as an observer, she cannot advocate for her side. She can only advocate fairness. She could call for the ballot to be thrown out. She could NOT call for the ballot to go Republican.

That omission is what's known as a LIE.

Oh, and, did she get the ballot number? No? Too bad.

Because of this, we don't have the benefit of seeing the ballot in question, and we never will. We can't see if it really was marked for both parties clearly. It's a filled-in oval, rather than a dot, dash, or check-mark. But this was clearly a case where three poll workers (at least) looked at the ballot, weren't sure, and thought it was probably a Democrat straight-line vote. We'll never know. But even if we give this particular poll-watcher 100% of the benefit of the doubt (and we shouldn't), we would still only have testimony, not outright evidence, of ONE VOTE gone awry.

One! Only twenty or thirty thousand to go!

He then brought three guests on his show. Patrick Colback, Phil O'Holloran, Melissa Carone. He asked them all to verify if they'd signed the affidavit "under threat of perjury?"

In fact, several times during the show, Hannity emphasizes that those who signed these affidavits did so "under threat of perjury." While technically that's right, to show perjury on an affidavit, one has to establish that the testimony is clearly and unambiguously deceitful in some way, and that's tricky to do with eyewitness accounts. So the "threat of perjury" doesn't really mean much on an affidavit. Hannity emphasizing this is just showmanship. But even taking the honesty of the signatories for granted, nothing they say proves a damned thing!

And what do these witnesses have to say? Phil O'Holloran testifies as to a lack of security present with regard to the process of collecting and tallying the ballots. He outright admits that he had an image in  his mind that the process would involve something like Brinks trucks and files kept under guard. When he saw the real on-the-ground process, which involved officials merely walking back and forth with the ballots or the vote totals, he was disappointed, and counts this as "evidence" of election fraud.

Jesus H. Christ! And this was done, not only on the AIR, but on a PODCAST, where such obvious logical flaws should have been edited right out!

Melissa Carone testified as a Dominion contract worker. She said her experience working for them was awful. She said her coworkers made rude comments about republicans. She said it was "not a mistake in their software to drop votes. The software was created for that purpose."

Hannity actually committed an act of journalism by asking, "How do you know that? Did you watch votes get changed? Did you see it with your own eyes?"

Her answer was telling. "I did not see that with my own eyes. That's from research that other people have done..."

Well, now how about that!

"Dominion supplied me with a binder that, uh, really states that, um, that their hardware is online. It was connected to the Internet. Uh, which it's not supposed to be. Um, I also stated that I was initially, uh..."

Hannity: "It stays it in the - in the materials they gave you?"

Melissa: "Yes, sir. Yes."

Hannity: "And did you hand it over to the investigators, here?"

Melissa: "Yes, I absolutely did. Yes."

Hannity: "Do you have a copy of it, still?"

Melissa: "I do."

Hannity: "I'd like to see it."

If she gave Hannity her copy, he has yet to say so. 

And in case you're wondering, this is exactly the same Melissa Carone who, the following day, testified in front of the Michigan House Panel, visibly drunk, and spouting off conspiracy-laden crap! At one point, even Rudy Giuliani tried to get her to shut up! Now that's some serious-level crazy when even Rudy Giuliani thinks you should zip it! You can see the video of it yourself, here. It's hilarious!

In her drunken testimony, she repeats Hannity's line about perjury. "Did you sign a piece of paper saying you would go to JAIL if you were lying? I did!"

Yeah, except that's completely unlikely, even if you happen to lie, because proving said lie is next to impossible.

Bye, Felicia.

If she had any credibility at all, she blew it with that drunken performance. And while being visibly intoxicated isn't an indication by itself of her testimony being false, it is at least an indication that she doesn't take her role as a witness seriously enough.

As to Melissa's claim regarding Dominion machines being connected to the Internet, Michigan rules state that such machines can only be networked after votes have been counted and a paper ballot trail  has been established. If that's what her manual says, then her testimony is deliberately misleading.

Hannity: "I was told, people testifying today, that they were, there was, the process the law allows, Patrick, for partisan observers to watch the vote counting from beginning to end. And that the chain of custody obviously should be watched as well. None of that happened, did it?

Patrick: "No, it didn't. It's particularly around military ballots. This is - you've probably seen the cardboard covering up the windows, um, where Republican poll challengers were prohibited from re-entering, the TCF hall to observe the military ballots. The reason that's so concerning is because military ballots come in a format that has to be duplicated on another ballot that's compatible with the format that the, uh, scanners can read. So if you don't have a Republican there, you're re-creating a whole bunch of votes and a whole bunch of ballots without any Republican oversight. They chose that time to do that for a reason. All night long we had Republican poll challengers in there till the wee hours of the morning. I was pulling 24 hour-plus shifts. (unintelligible) was going on at night. They had zero activity pretty much between midnight and about 5 a.m. in the morning where there's no counting, but they had the military ballots available to go off and count then. They chose not to count them until after they locked down the facility and kept the - additional Republican poll challengers from attending. So..."

Hannity: "So how many Republican poll challengers were in there at a time when they were allowed to be there the whole time?"

Patrick: "We estimate about a dozen or so. Yeah."

Aha! So there were at least some Republican observers present! This was not done in complete seclusion!

Hannity: "A dozen - with how many people counting ballots?"

Patrick: "A hundred and thirty-four separate counting boards inside of there, representing five hundred and three precincts."

Hannity: "And what was the distance between the observers and the counting?"

That question never did get answered. Instead, Phil went off on a tangent.

Phil: "This... observers... in the county... the observers... were uh, for the Republican party or the Democrat party, the counters and the poll workers... uh, one thing that's really important to point out here is that the Democrats allowed in very large numbers of un-credentialed people. And what that allowed them to do was not only to harass us, which was incessant, but it also boosted the numbers in the counting port so that they could then say, 'Well, we've got too many people in here. Better close it down.' Then, once they'd closed it down, then, Republicans who'd went out just to go to the bathroom or something, or went out to the hallway to take a break, found that they couldn't get back in. So it was selective re-entry. And when I was also reporting the Penske truck to the Sergeant [What Penske truck? That never got explained on the podcast.], uh, he, he was part of a SWAT team, an 8 or 9 man SWAT team, that was not letting us in. And at this point, I said, no - one of the, uh, one of the, I think it was, Trump Republican officials - he said, "Sir, there are only ten Republicans inside there," and I looked on, and there were, prob - it was just, uh - too numerous to count the Democrats. I mean, it was like one, obviously, one for every, uh, one of a hundred and thirty-four counting boards, plus numerous private and non-credentialed people who weren't even supposed to be in there."

USA Today and the Detroit Free Press both disputed this long, long ago. At one point in the day, there were 268 Democratic Challengers, 227 Republican Challengers, and 75 non-partisan challengers on the floor. But only 134 challengers were supposed to be inside! Per state rules! Eventually, people had to be dis-allowed back in after leaving, because officials were concerned about the spread of Covid-19, as well as general fire hazards.

So are they right about only 10 or 12 Republicans being in there at one point? Probably not. Because how do you do a head-count in a room filled with people, who are all required to be unmarked (no MAGA hats, or the like), when the windows were covered, and only the area directly in front of the glass door was visible? It's far more likely that 12 is an extreme exaggeration regarding the actual number of Republicans inside. Keep in mind that Phil O'Holloran claimed that there was an 8 or 9 man SWAT team blocking them from getting back in! That's a HUGE exaggeration, too! Oh, I'll grant that fewer Republicans than Democrats may have been in there, because I'm convinced, by experience, that Trump supporters are far more capable of harassment than Democrats, but there's just no way that I buy that there were only 12! That's the exaggeration of a very bad liar!

Both sides contend harassment. I believe it. Tensions were high and emotions ran hot. But none of that establishes that only 12 Republicans were inside, and even if it were true that Republicans had been winnowed down to 12, none of them witnessed any fraud.

The ballot counters had it hard enough without people violating the 6-feet rule, leering over their shoulders, and barking at them at every little thing! The MAGA people are upset that the windows were boarded over. Had I been in charge, I would have been tempted to turn the fire hoses on them!

And what was missing from this whole, big tirade that Hannity had on his show? EVIDENCE OF ANY FRAUD! We heard evidence that fewer Republicans were ballot-checking than Democrats. So what? We heard evidence that the Dominion computer may have gotten hooked up to the Internet at one point. That's not allowed, but IS allowed after the vote counting is complete. Again, so what? We heard evidence that one driver's trailer got reassigned to someone else without his knowledge. So what? We heard from a woman who had either poor eyesight or a remarkable inability to lie, telling an impossible whopper of a story. So what? We heard testimony regarding the back-dating of ballots, which wouldn't have affected the count anyway. SO FUCKING WHAT? Does any of this prove fraud? HELL NO! Hell, it's hearsay! It's anecdote! It doesn't even count as EVIDENCE of fraud! Not one ballot was clearly witnessed as fraudulent! With as many as 227 Republicans pacing the room like lions, not one! (Or, maybe just one if you count Christina Caromo's testimony, and I, for one, am not willing to grant that kind of latitude.)

Not one "witness" ever said something like, "ballot #2247 was fraudulent! I saw it!" Not one witness could! Because they couldn't find one! These people are all witnesses, not to facts, but to their impressions, their feelings, and their biased perceptions.

Sean, at long last, it's time to ask, in the words of the little, old granny from the old Burger King commercials, "Where's the beef?"

Eric

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Conservative Media vs Conservative Media

 

Conservative media is at war with itself, and nowhere more so than on Fox News.

During the day, Fox News acknowledges the Biden victory, and generally covers that particular news story straight.

But come evening...

Fox News transforms into a conspiracy-mongering fount of bullshit where Biden and the Democrats stole the election from the ever-stalwart champion of freedom and Democracy, Donald John Trump.

This on-air Civil War, with its fault-line running right through the A.M. and P.M. divide on the flagship conservative network, has created a first-rate identity crisis within conservative media. On one side is Truth, with a capital "T." Those outlets which value truth as a matter of integrity are acknowledging a Biden victory and opining about other things by now. These are not merely the disgruntled journalists who got fed up with the constant lies of Trumpism and formed their own media outlets with The Bulwark and The Lincoln Project. These include long-standing conservative stalwarts who cannot deny reality because it isn't in their nature (as much). These are outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, and National Review. On the other side, where Ratings rule over Truth, are Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingram, Matt Levin, Lou Dobbs and the usual ensemble cast of self-affirming falsehood generators. Fractured between the two sits Fox News, the New York Post, and the Drudge Report. The fault line has even cracked right through the middle of Tucker Carlson's show. After being forced to issue a retraction on Friday, November 13th regarding the false story of James Blalock voting from the grave, Tucker laid it on the line regarding the phony narrative of (former) Trump lawyer Sydney Powell on November 20th. Because Powell had refused to give any evidence of her voter fraud claims, even Tucker Carlson had to finally call her out on it. Sydney was later fired - not for lying, but for making Trump look bad.

While it fills me with gleeful delight to see so many right-wingers chanting, "Fox News sucks!" it also worries me how this not-so-civil war will play out. It is entirely possible that those asked to tell the truth on Fox News will flee entirely to Newsmax, One America News, or some other truth-optional outlet. Such a development would insulate the Right-Wing Media Cult even further from facts, and set the stage for 2024 to whip up a candidate even worse than Trump, assuming Trump isn't the candidate again.

I'm also left wondering why, at this juncture, America can't wake up to the blindingly obvious reality that Hannity, Limbaugh and their ilk have been CAUGHT LYING THEIR ASSES OFF for over a solid month, and THAT'S just pertaining to the election! I can't help but marvel how these people, laid bare for being so remarkably bad at their jobs, still HAVE jobs! Oh, to be sure, their job isn't to tell the truth, but they SAY that it is! And that means that the conspiracy theory bullshit about a stolen vote has exposed them for being the snake oil salesmen which they are. I can't help but ask, at what point do these idiots get fired? I mean, how much bullshit does it take?

This goes beyond propaganda. It's not merely spin-doctoring. This is flat-out LYING, for WEEKS on end, with the obvious truth hanging out there, as bare as the emperor with his new clothes, and nowhere is there an innocent child who points out, "Hey, the Emperor is naked!"

Newsbusters is a right-wing fact-checking organization, somewhat akin to PolitiFact or Snopes, but clearly conservative. (I find it interesting the conservative fact-checkers would name themselves "Newsubsters." Just as "Ghostbusters" busts ghosts, "Newsbusters" busts - what, news?) If anybody would be able to expose any lies the "main stream" media is telling regarding election fraud, it would be THIS website. Yet the only story that claims any kind of solid evidence for voter fraud comes in the form of a "Special Report" that claims that the biased news media swayed voters to choose Biden over Trump. It claims that because the media buried news stories about Tara Reade and Hunter Biden's laptops (both of which I investigated thoroughly on this blog), that as many as one in six voters was persuaded to vote for Biden rather than Trump. Extending that figure throughout the electorate, that translates to a Trump victory, which was avoided because "the media" didn't report the truth. This was based on a survey in which 1,750 Biden voters were "informed" regarding the Tara Reade and Hunter Biden scandals, they found that 82% of them weren't aware of them, and that 17% of them would have changed their vote.

Get that? Trump didn't lose because of any actual "stolen" votes. The election was "stolen," according to Newsbusters, by a media which didn't report the truth. 

But the actual vote totals are still accurate!

Of course, the Tara Reade story turned out to be bullshit. The Hunter Biden laptop story smelled fishy from the beginning. And, of course, the conservative media refused to tell the truth about Trump and his constant scandals for five years. The voters who were "exposed" to the "facts" about Biden in this conservative "survey" were being lied to. So this only proves that lies can sway an election, and could have swayed this one more than they did.

But we knew that, already.

If this is the best that even a conservative fact-check organization can do, I think we can lay to rest any claims regarding election fraud. Case closed.

Meanwhile, I'm still amazed Hannity and Limbaugh have not yet been fired.

But they never will be. Not until news outlets are fact-based instead of ratings-based.

Eric

*