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
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