There is something almost esoteric about the importance most people attach to the fact that someone they know announces that they will change the direction of their expected vote. When a Democrat turns pro-Trump or when a Republican announces that he will vote for Harris it is pretty clear what is going on: In the first case, he has been mugged by an illegal immigrant in his own home; in the second, it was not a good idea to mix whiskey with vodka and multi-colored pills. Changing Your Vote Is Rarely a Pauline Moment If You’re a Politician If you think about it coldly, someone announcing a change of vote means nothing special, unless you believe that there has been a fall from the Pauline horse — something really supernatural — and that that person is now right and intelligent, after 40 years of defending nonsense with all conviction. This is not the norm. If politicians believed more in God, they would change the direction of their vote less and, perhaps, they would earn their living as pianists in a whorehouse, or at any other job more honest than politics. (READ MORE: On the Destructive Power of Cat-Eater Memes) A politician’s announcement that, for the first time in his history, he will vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate says more about the politician than about the candidate. His interest is usually personal. Often: Skirting around within the party, failed attempts to place a son in a relevant office, or arguing over a parking space with some relative of the candidate. If you think he has spent a whole week in his library, reading books on political theory, pondering the pros and cons of whatever candidate’s proposals, and trying to figure out which vote will be best for his nation, you’ve either lost your mind, or you’ve never seen a politician up close in your life. A Good Father, But a Bad Supporter I have read in newspapers around the world in thick headlines the news that Bush’s very Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney will endorse Kamala Harris. Good vintage whiskey, no doubt. Once upon a time “news” was information about something considered interesting to report. That the Cheneys won’t endorse Trump shouldn’t be news in 2024 when they’ve been tripping the former president up since at least 2016. Over the past decade, Cheney has not been known for the strength of his endorsements, and his interventions in the public debate have been more to defend his stewardship in the past than to defend conservatives in the future. He harshly criticized Trump in February of 2016 accusing him of being like “a liberal Democrat,” and just two months later announced that he would support Trump, privately acknowledging that he was doing so to support his daughter Liz’s political career. This makes him a good father, perhaps, but a bad supporter. (READ MORE: Was It Worth the Empanadas?) For the rest of it, Liz Cheney’s political career went to hell long ago, after colliding head-on with Donald Trump’s locomotive, so it would make no sense for them to support the former president now unless their principles were greater than their thirst for revenge. Only from a colossal binge of personal rancor can a conservative announce his vote for someone like Harris, a communist-abortionist-feminist storyteller. This Ought to be the End of Political Dynasties I am sorry to tell you that I am not moved by the converts in the opposite direction either: the leaders of the Democratic party who now announce that they have become Trumpists. They are often driven by the same compass of self-interest. And don’t think I’m criticizing people changing their minds, I do it about a thousand times a day. I just don’t think it’s an argument in favor of any candidate that an old glory of politics now decides when he has nothing left to lose, to change teams. The candidate and the proposals will be good or bad with or without the change of shirt of the last-minute converts. In his brilliant analysis last Monday, Jeffrey Lord recounts that Republican Rep. John Anderson despised Reagan so much that, after losing the Republican nomination to him, “he formed a third party to carry the fight against Reagan into the fall election — and lost decisively.” The only thing these self-serving conversions suggest to me is that we must fight harder and harder against professional politicians. We need more principled new blood who want to do good for their country, with a spirit of public service, and fewer people trying to form a six-generation family clan attached to the government teat and the goose that lays the golden eggs of politics. (RELATED: Liz Cheney and the Reason MAGA Voters Side with Trump) We must put an end to those people who, in the delivery room, instead of hearing whether a boy or a girl has been born, the doctor tells them: “Congratulations, you have had a magnificent future member of the United States House of Representatives, healthy, and weighing eight pounds.” The post Cheney’s Change of Vote Means Nothing appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

PHOENIX—It was a sweltering 112 degrees in Scottsdale, Arizona, as I climbed into my truck at 8 a.m. on July 30, 2024. Primary election day was in full swing, and I had volunteered to be a roving attorney at the polls. Despite the heat, I was on a mission to observe as many Maricopa County vote centers as possible. I hoped that the day would be uneventful and foreshadow a smooth general election in November, unlike Election Day in November 2022. Despite Knowing There Was a Problem, the RNC Took No Action in 2022 On primary election day in 2022, I had embarked on my first foray as a roving attorney in the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity program. The RNC had me visit 11 Maricopa County polling sites. My subsequent written report to the RNC stated that six of my 11 vote centers had tabulators that struggled to count the ballots because the on-site printers were not producing sufficiently dark ballots. I noted limited failures of the printer/tabulators at five of those six polling locations. However, both tabulators at Paradise Valley’s First Southern Baptist Church failed to work at all. (READ MORE: The Real Reason Democrats Fear Losing in November) Unfortunately, my 2022 primary report landed on deaf ears. The RNC took no action. Several months later, the impact of that inaction became frighteningly clear. The same printer/tabulator malfunctions that I observed during the July primary returned in spades at Maricopa County vote centers in November, disproportionately disenfranchising Republicans, who composed 80 percent of Election Day voters. On Nov. 8, 2022, I observed 10 vote centers. Seven of them had significant problems getting the tabulators to count the printed ballots. After Election Day, I surveyed 10 other roving attorneys. Together, we had observed 115 of Maricopa County’s 223 vote centers. Based on those interviews, I wrote a comprehensive report that concluded that (a) 62 percent of the vote centers we visited had material problems with tabulators that could not read printed ballots and (b) 51 percent of the vote centers we visited featured significant lines in which voters were forced to wait one to four hours, due to printer/tabulator malfunctions. (READ MORE: Kamala Chameleon’s Girl From the Hood Gambit) The post-election sworn declarations of poll workers and voters proved that many citizens who went to the polls that day left without voting because of the tabulator problems and long lines. Beyond question, Republican voters disproportionately were disenfranchised on Election Day by Maricopa County’s technical failures. Most infuriating, my primary-election observations foreshadowed the snafus on general Election Day 2022. And yet the RNC did nothing during the intervening months to prevent that general election technological disaster. Primary Election Issues Could Spell Problems for November 2024 With this background, I observed Maricopa County’s vote centers yet again. During Arizona’s July 30, 2024, primary I visited 11 polling sites and witnessed assorted technical breakdowns: A check-in computer did not connect to the virtual private network. A printer did not print ballots. Another printer placed only two races on a ballot. Yet another printer smudged ballots such that tabulators could not count them. One tabulator would not turn on. While each of these failures occurred at only one vote center, I also discovered a tabulator paper-jam problem at multiple polling centers that could wreak havoc during the upcoming general election. I arrived at North Scottsdale Methodist Church at 2:45 p.m. The poll inspector named Paulette told me that she made an executive decision to use one of her two tabulators that worked. Ballots were jamming in the other one. She reasoned that the functioning tabulator seemed to be handling the light primary-voter traffic. Nevertheless, I was concerned that tabulator jamming, once again, could disenfranchise election-day voters during the heavy turnout of the impending presidential showdown. (READ MORE: The Establishment Media Has Gaslit America for Four Years) Paulette let me observe the tabulator jam. She asked a voter to insert his ballot into the tabulator. The tabulator appeared to count the ballot, but a “Paper Jam” error then appeared on the digital screen atop the device. Paulette unlocked the back of the tabulator and revealed that the ballot was stuck inside the machine and had not dropped into the box of tabulated ballots. Paulette manually removed the stuck ballot from the tabulator. She mistakenly placed it into a box of untabulated ballots that needed to be counted at central headquarters. I reminded her that the ballot should have been placed into the box of already-tabulated ballots. She agreed and moved that ballot into the correct box. Paulette then relocked the tabulator and entered a code to clear the “Paper Jam” error from the tabulator screen and reset it for the next voter. This entire process consumed two to three minutes. Fifteen minutes later, a Maricopa County Troubleshooter arrived to fix the tabulator. Election officials had instructed her to clean the machine by running a cleaning sheet through it several times. This effort failed. The North Scottsdale Methodist Church voting site operated the rest of the day at half-capacity, with only one functioning tabulator. A bit later that afternoon, Jamie, the poll inspector at Venue 8600, told me that her vote center also was equally hobbled, with one tabulator running smoothly and the other plagued with the same paper jam problem that I witnessed at the Methodist church. If this “Paper Jam” mess recurs amid the throngs of voters in Greater Phoenix on November 5, 2024, it will make November 2022’s mishaps resemble a pleasant desert breeze. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Mark Sonnenklar, Esq. is a business transactions attorney who practiced in Los Angeles and Phoenix. He founded and ran a Los Angeles Tea Party group from 2010 to 2016. He is a Maricopa County, Arizona, precinct committeeman. The post Arizona Election Snafus: We Won’t Get Fooled Again appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Desperate Kamala Claims Trump Has No Economic Plan For You pic.twitter.com/Jdnon4yevU — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) September 11, 2024

from ZeroHedge: Tonight, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off in their first and only scheduled debate at 9PM ET on ABC News. There will be no live audience and no opening statements according to the rules released by the network last week. Harris and Trump won’t be able to ask each other questions. TRUTH […]

by Ron Paul, Ron Paul Institute: Last weekend several hundred of us gathered in Washington, DC, at the Ron Paul Institute conference to again proclaim our dedication to the cause of liberty and our opposition to constant US government assaults on that liberty. Our collaborators included old friends like Judge Andrew Napolitano, who explained that […]

by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute: “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln It is both apt and ironic that the anniversary of 9/11, which paved the way for the government to […]

In one of the most fiery exchanges in the early stages of the presidential debate, Donald Trump said that Kamala Harris' father taught her well. Normally, that would be a good thing -- except her father, Donald Harris, was a Marxist professor. The remark came during a debate over tariff...