Tag: Americas

James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, vowed Tuesday night  to hold obstinate witnesses in contempt of Congress and eventually compel President Joe Biden to submit to an interview.

The House Oversight Chair’s pledge comes on the verge of issuing a wave of subpoenas to the Biden family and its associates in relation to the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

“You know, we’re gonna start with the family,” Comer told the “Just the News, No Noise” show during an interview. “We have to ask the family specific questions. And then in the end, the very last person we’ll interview will obviously be the President of the United States.”

Comer said he will interrogate members of the Biden family and associates regarding the elaborate transfer of foreign funds from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, China, and Ukraine via a network of shell companies and bank accounts.

The focus of the investigation: “What role did Joe play in all of this?”

Comer intends to issue multiple subpoenas of Biden’s family beginning on Wednesday.

The revelation in recent weeks that President Biden received two checks from James Biden in 2017 marked as ‘loan repayments’ totaling $240,000 after his brother received money from Chinese or domestic clients, according to him, demonstrates that the president benefited from business dealings involving his family.

He further stated that his committee lacks sufficient evidence at this time to determine whether the transactions involving the president and his brother were, in fact, based on loans.

“Joe Biden’s $240,000 better off because of his family’s influence-peddling scheme,” Comer said. “That is a fact. And we do not have any evidence at the White House is saying that would prove that that was a loan.”

On Sunday, Comer explained the stunning origins of the $40,000 check given by James Biden to his brother Joe Biden.

!function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src=”https://rumble.com/embedJS/u4870v”+(arguments[1].video?’.’+arguments[1].video:”)+”/?url=”+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+”&args=”+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, “script”, “Rumble”);

Rumble(“play”, {“video”:”v3rcoep”,”div”:”rumble_v3rcoep”});

“If you go back to that email that you just put on the screen [the ‘Big Guy’ email], Tony Bobulinski, who was also supposed to be in on that deal with CEFC and the Bidens, where Joe Biden was supposed to get 10%, according to Hunter Biden, it matches up perfectly,” he said.

“We traced the $40,000 check that Joe Biden received all the way back to that WhatsApp message where Hunter Biden claimed his father was sitting beside him, where he was shaking down the Chinese operative. That’s where that $40,000 was triggered week. Just a few weeks after that text message, that $40,000 landed in Joe Biden’s pocket after the Biden’s laundered it. But that money came from China.”

“Further evidence that Joe Biden benefited from his family’s influence peddling scheme,” Comer added.

Source

Kentucky’s governor race is raising eyebrows on the right, as reports of gas leaks and improbable election totals have triggered flashbacks to the 2020 election.

On Tuesday, reports of a gas leak at a polling place that extended vote-counting hours had many armchair observers wondering if this was a repeat of the infamous State Farm Arena incident in 2020, when a water leak was reported in the early hours of Election Day.

But the Democratic faithful were quick to fire back that there was no basis to believe that the gas leak had anything to do with the Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear’s declared victory in the deep red state.

“There are lots of pundits explaining why the GOP didn’t win the Kentucky governorship but none of them make much sense to me. How did the GOP AG receive 125K more votes than the GOP Gov candidate? Why did 57K fewer people vote for governor than AG?”

The Associated Press as of Wednesday morning reports that Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear has 693,370 votes.

However, Republican attorney general candidate Russell Coleman trounced Democrat Pamela Stevenson. His final vote total? 752,303 votes.

That would be 57,000 votes more than Andy Beshear attained.

So, did all of those voters who turned out for Russell Coleman turn up their noses when it came to Daniel Cameron?

It’s possible, but seems implausible.

The 2023 election dynamics in Kentucky should be teased apart a bit to assess just how implausible.

Abortion as an issue looms large. The state had passed a highly restrictive abortion law in 2022 that mobilized Democratic voters. Daniel Cameron, a Trump-backed candidate, ran as an unapologetic evangelical who had condemned abortion without moral ambiguity (although he qualified his position slightly late into his campaign).

Russell Coleman is more of an establishment Republican by background. He served as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky. He was also a senior advisor and legal counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell and is a former FBI special agent.

That’s fascinating, particularly given the extensive complaints that election integrity advocates on the left have made about Kentucky politics and McConnell’s cozying up to voting machine companies.

In 2019, as reported by Newsweek, McConnell received a “slew of donations” from four of the top voting machine lobbyists in the country.

McConnell would go on to squash three election security bills.

“It’s not surprising to me that Mitch McConnell is receiving these campaign contributions,” the Brennan Center for Justice’s Lawrence Norden told Sludge at the time. “He seems single-handedly to be standing in the way of anything passing in Congress around election security, and that includes things that the vendors might want, like money for the states to replace antiquated equipment.”

One of the bills, the Securing America’s Federal Elections or SAFE Act, would have authorized more funding for the Election Assistance Commission and includes language that would ban voting machines from being connected to the internet and being produced in foreign countries.

The Wall Street Journal, in an article that provided some nuance for the positives and negatives of the legislation, laid out what the SAFE Act would have done.

“The core of the Safe Act is a pile of federal money, $600 million in the first year, to help states upgrade their voting systems. The bill would standardize and tighten election rules. All votes for federal office would have to be cast via paper ballots. A portion of this audit trail would then need to be manually checked for every election. Voting machines—presumably devices that assist in marking paper ballots—could not be manufactured outside the U.S. or connected to the internet.”

On its face, these seem like sensible reforms to the general electorate.

Interestingly, Newsweek remarked that “McConnell’s actions seemed even more out of balance with his party, as the Senate Intelligence Committee⁠—led by Republicans⁠—released a report later on Thursday claiming Russians have targeted voting systems in all 50 states in 2016.”

Whether the American people should worry more about the Russians or partisan domestic activists operating as bad actors is a matter of debate.

On Tuesday, we witnessed Ballot Marking Device (BMD) issues in Northampton County in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where machines were shut down due to reports of voting errors, including “votes getting flipped.” The county turned then to paper ballots.

In Harris County, there were also reports of issues with the ‘hybrid’ voting machines.

Kentucky’s active voting machines, according to the State Board of Elections, are as follows: ES&S DS200 Scanner; ES&S ExpressVote BMD Terminal; Hart Intercivic Escan; Hart Intercivic Eslate; Hart Intercivic Verity Scan; Hart Intercivic Verity Touchwriter; and Hart Intercivic Verity Duo. A brief description follows below:

• The ES&S DS200 is “a poll place ballot scanner and vote tabulator that combines the flexibility and efficiency of digital-imaging technology to support paper-based voting.”
• The ES&S ExpressVote BMD Terminal is a “paper-based ExpressVote Universal Voting System uses touch-screen technology that produces a paper record for tabulation.”
• The Hart Intercivic Escan is a “ballot scanning device. It is used to support polling locations with voters who hand-mark paper ballots (typically distributed at the polling place check-in station) and then hand-feed the paper ballots into the scanner, in order to cast the ballot.”
• The Hart Intercivic Eslate is “a direct recording electronic voting device. The eSlate is typically used in polling places that have implemented a fully electronic voting experience as an alternative to hand marked paper ballots.”
• The Hart Intercivic Verity Scan is “a ballot scanning and tabulating device. It is used most often to support polling locations with voters who hand-mark paper ballots.”
• The Hart InterCivic Verity Touch Writer is “a ballot marking device that combines touchscreen voting with an attached commercial off-the-shelf COTS) printer.”
• The Hart InterCivic’s Verity Duo is “a ballot marking device that combines touchscreen voting with an integrated thermal printer and is typically used in jurisdictions fielding ballot marking devices (BMDs) for all voters.”

According to the non-profit organization Common Cause, “the most effective solutions to improve the integrity of our elections are often simple and commonsense. They include”:

• Retire old and outdated voting machines, upgrade the technology we use, and move towards employing paper ballots in every state.
• Require risk-limiting, post-election audits of ballots to confirm that reported election results are accurate.
• Ensure paper back-ups of our voter registration databases and electronic voter rolls.
• Eliminate the use of online voting. Ballots cast by email or through an internet portal are vulnerable to hacking.

So, are there reasons to suspect any malfeasance in the Kentucky election? That is up for debate.

The Daily Kos did a deep dive on Kentucky election results in 2021 and found a number of anomalies. The report was based in part on reporting by Alison Greene at the DC Report.

“I can also confirm the anomalous nature of the results as Ms. Greene noted: in a county with six Dem voters to every one Repub voter, we would not expect to see Trump get at least three times as many votes as Biden, nor would we expect McConnell to receive twice as many votes as McGrath.  Indeed, in this heavily Dem-majority county, the only Dem candidate to poll better than his/her Repub rival was the candidate for SC justice.”

In summary, there were unexpectedly high numbers of Republican voters turning out to vote in Democratic-heavy counties in 2020. This does not necessarily mean anything askance with the voting machines, in particular, because the turnout anomalies were recorded on both ES&S and Hart Intercivic machines.

But given the background of the attorney general candidate as well as the voting machine lobbyist donations to Senator Mitch McConnell, the 2023 off-year election results are intriguing and certainly a basis for further investigation.

Source

The Republican Party, apparently, hasn’t learned its lesson from 2020.

Or from 2018. Or from 2022. Or from any election where the feckless RNC is tasked with holding the line against a relentless assault on Americans’ rights and freedoms.

Based on these off-year election results, things are going to get a whole lot worse for Republican voters to mobilize to make necessary changes in their government.

First, let’s get to the gubernatorial elections.

Governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear was re-elected after beating Trump-endorsed candidate Daniel Cameron, an evangelical running amidst an unpopular near-total state ban on abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Beshear’s win means the state government will stay split until at least 2024, when the next state parliamentary elections take place. The Democrats hold the governorship and the Republicans hold both house of the state legislature.

Biden lost Kentucky by more than 25 points three years ago. It is inexplicable how the Republican Party is afraid to fight for voters, even in states where they are receptive.

On the flip side for Republicans, Governor of Mississippi Tate Reeves was re-elected after beating Brandon Presley. With Reeves’ win, the state will still have a power trifecta: the governor, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

Recently, Republican Jeff Landry was elected as Louisiana’s governor on October 14.

To quote Meatloaf: Two out of three ain’t bad.

But abortion referenda shows that the issue remains a lightning rod for left-leaning and pro-choice voters.

ABC News crowed about the election results, and it’s illustrative of what voters are likely to constantly hear about the issue ahead of 2024.

“Striking liberal turnout, a comparative dearth of voters who backed Donald Trump in 2020 and broad support for legal abortion helped make Ohio, on Tuesday, the latest state projected to support abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, according to exit polling,” ABC News trumpeted.

Then the news outlet provided data to back up its claims.

“Liberals [sic] accounted for 34% of voters in Ohio exit poll results, up sharply from 20% in the 2022 midterms and 21% in the 2020 presidential election. That’s a record-high turnout among liberals in Ohio exit polls dating back to 1984. They backed both the abortion and marijuana referenda by vast margins, 94-6% for abortion and 85-15% for marijuana.”

Here’s the breakdown on Trump voter turnout.

“In line with greater turnout by liberals, Trump 2020 voters were in comparatively short supply: Voters said in exit polling that they backed Joe Biden over Trump in 2020, 45-43%. But Trump won Ohio in that election, 53-45%.”

No Trump, no Trump voters. Not good. But how is the Republican Party trying to reach them?

The underlying problem is that nobody trusts the Republicans to abide by their word. Where are the J6 tapes? Where are the impeachments for Joe Biden, Merrick Garland or even Alejandro Mayorkas? When will the weaponized FBI be defunded?

The Democrats think this is a political war. The Republicans think this is a political game.

Trump voters see rising threats to the nation in terms of the border crisis, the non-stop war machine, and the monumental levels of debt. Establishment Republicans yawn and continue on with business-as-usual, which entails counting their filthy lucre in Loudoun and Fairfax counties.

But that’s not all for 2023. Furthermore, a Democrat won an open seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after campaigning on a pledge to uphold abortion rights. Democrat Daniel McCaffery defeated Republican Carolyn Carluccio in Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court race, increasing the Democrats’ majority on the court ahead of the 2024 election.

This, once again, bodes ill for the Keystone State’s voters, since the swing state has been the site of numerous recent election debacles. In 2022, a flood of mail-in ballots caused serious delays to the state’s counting of votes. It was an encore performance for its ridiculous election practices in 2021, and of course, in 2020 as well.

This year was no different. Multiple voting machines in Northampton County on Tuesday were reported to be shut down due to errors, including “votes getting flipped.” The county switched to paper ballots (perhaps something it should have done all along).

At a news conference on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Election Systems & Software (ES&S), the company that made the voting machines, claimed that an employee made a mistake. They said they “regret the situation” and are committed to “fair, accurate results.”

The election issue surfaced in the early hours of Tuesday and pertained to the contest for the Pennsylvania Superior Court between Judge Jack Panella and Judge Victor Stabile.

In judicial retention contests, opponents are not included on the ballot. The ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option is provided for the voter to determine whether they want the judge to remain in their position. ES&S says the issue will be fixed in the backend. Reassuring.

And in other blow to the Republicans’ election hopes, Democrats took full control of the Virginia statehouse, delivering a defeat to Gov. Glenn Youngkin that may quell any expectations that he will make a late entry into the GOP presidential primary.

The underwhelming off-year election results under a historically bad Democratic presidency have many voters concerned about the upcoming 2024 elections.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that a whopping 76 percent of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction.

The survey revealed that a striking 95% of Republicans are negative and believe the country is going in the wrong way. This was followed by 76% of independents and 54% of Democrats.

Yet the RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel continuously fails to harness all of this widespread dissatisfaction about the nation’s state of affairs and turn it into meaningful election results. This is the fourth straight election cycle where the Trump-backed McDaniel has blown it.

The Washington Examiner published a litany against her in the aftermath of the 2022 midterms, where a “red wave” failed to even make a splash.

Ronna McDaniel is about to win another term as the head of the Republican National Committee. It is an incredible feat, given her track record of failure…

That is fantastic news for Democrats, who watched McDaniel take control of the RNC in 2017. Since then, Republicans have lost the House in 2018 and the White House in 2020. With President Joe Biden wildly unpopular, Republicans should have dominated the midterm elections in November. Instead, the party went out with a whimper, just barely taking the House and losing one seat in the Senate. McDaniel has overseen three election cycles now, and the best she can say is that one of them (2020) was just a failure, rather than a miserable failure.

If the RNC under McDaniel is no good at helping Republicans win elections, what exactly has McDaniel been good at? What does she bring to the table? The GOP’s candidates have become worse over the last three cycles, not better. The party lost the House in a “blue wave” in 2018, lost the presidency to the political dinosaur Joe Biden in 2020, and then failed to win sweeping control of Congress in a 2022 cycle that should have been a “red wave.”

No wonder conservative commentators are calling for her to give it up and let somebody more serious take the helm.

SHE NEEDS TO GO pic.twitter.com/h2Rb74zkTv

— Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) November 8, 2023

Many believe these disappointing election results are due to the populist presidential candidate Donald Trump being off the ballot. But that argument reveals a major issue: Keep Trump off the ballot and the MAGA movement doesn’t show up for elections.

It’s enough to give Trump’s political enemies all of the wrong ideas ahead of 2024.

Source