10,000 Lawyers, Steve Bannon and Marc Elias
The Presidential Election Under Siege
Whatever It Takes
A left-wing Australian politician, Graham Richardson (known as “Richo”), was famous for saying more than 30 years ago, that he would do “whatever it takes” to win an election for the Australian Labor Party - the local equivalent of UK Labour or the US Democrats.
The collectivists are famous for supporting the idea of doing “whatever it takes”, including in the 1930s, Stalin’s purges of “capitalist running dogs”, to employ a term used by the China Communists. In the US, “whatever it takes” has included “lawfare” (legal warfare), against Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Currently, dark legal forces are operating in Washington “bunkers” to contest a Trump victory by examining a range of legal challenges to results in states where the voting is close. The US Presidential Election is now just days away, and considerable attention is being given to legal manoeuvres to challenge election results and prevent ineligible voters being removed from election rolls. These legal techniques have been in process for many months because in the US, each state has its own election system with various rules and regulations.
Democrats have fiercly opposed any legal requirements for voter ID to ensure that voters are legitimate. The reason given is that Democrats claim that requiring ID is “racist”, which is an argument that is increasingly hard to sustain. Every voter in the US has to have some form of proof of identity.
Additionally, Democrat operatives have been trying to enrol illegal immigrants, who have no right to vote, on voter rolls. The US government itself, has been running a campaign to enroll voters in various situations where the enrollment is much more likely to favour Democrats over Republicans.
The situation is complex and messy, which is why Donald Trump has refused to unconditionally endorse the election results.
Unlike most other countries, where there is a standardised voting process overseen by a national body - in Australia is is the Australian Electoral Commission - the US Founding Fathers had concerns about any centralised system. So, in the US there are, in effect, 50 different elections and each of the processes are different.
Recently, the Michigan Secretary of State said that election results may not be finalized until the weekend after the Tuesday 5 November voting. In other states it may be weeks. Pre-voting-day voting has been running in some states for the last month and postal voting, which demonstrated many irregularities in the last presidential election, could still have a major influence on the outcome of the election. In Washington State and Oregon, hundreds of ballot boxes were set on fire earlier in the week. I wonder what will happen to these votes?
Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist in 2016-17, was just released from prison on literally “trumped up” charges resulting from him refusing to provide testimony for the politically-constituted January 6 Committee. Since the last presidential election, Bannon has run The War Room, an online broadcasting site that describes itself this way: “Bannon Blazes a Path to Reclaim the People's Government: Demands End to Endless Wars and Elites' Control”.
Figure 1. Main web page of Steve Bannon’s War Room
Bannon has mobilised Republican voters to come out in force to vote for Donald Trump. it is extraordinary that only around 50% of eligible voters vote in US elections. This figure was higher in the 2020 election (around 60%) because of the provision for the extensive use of postal ballots.
Bannon has said that Republican voters need to come out in mass to ensure that the outcome is “too big to rig”. However, it seems that Democrats are readying for various legal challenges to results, and undoubtedly there are lawyers on the Republican side, alert for any potential skulduggery. If the outcome is close (270 Electoral College votes are needed), the outcome may not be known until 6 January, when the Electoral College vote must be announced by the Vice President, as President of the Senate.
The US Electoral College system is difficult to understand but provides a way for the less populous states to have a greater influence on the outcome of the election. This is well explained on the website - 270towin.com, a graphic of which is shown below.
Figure 2. Main webpage of 270towin.com showing electoral college votes and anticipated voting in 2024
Using techniques of “lawfare” is not a new strategy and the Democrats have spent the past three years scheming to have Donald Trump indicted and using legal warfare to try (unsuccessfully) to have Trump removed from the election ballot in a number of states. Contrived charges also have been brought against Trump in New York, Washington, Georgia and Florida. The “evil genius” behind much of this strategy is Marc Elias.
Marc Elias
Marc Elias is a name that I have heard a lot over the past 18 months, who seems to be at the centre of the legal strategies being used by the Democrats to disable Trump and gain advantages in the various states’ electoral processes.
Figure 3. Marc Elias, Chair of Elias Law Group. Photo from the firm’s website.
The Elias Law Group based in Washington D.C. On its website, the firm describes Elias as and his firm as follows:
“….a mission-driven firm committed to helping Democrats win, citizens vote, and progressives make change. Marc is a nationally recognized authority and expert in campaign finance, voting rights, redistricting law, and litigation.
As a litigator, Marc has handled hundreds of cases involving politics, voting rights, and redistricting. He has successfully argued and won four cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as dozens of cases in state supreme courts and U.S. courts of appeal.
He has represented the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, several presidential campaigns, as well as dozens of U.S. senators, governors, representatives, campaigns, and other Democratic and progressive organizations.”
To translate, it seems that Elias is a “hatchet man” who, like the Australian politician “Richo” will do “whatever it takes” to produce an outcome for Democrats. Although he looks benign in his photograph, he seems to be a “true believer” who directs an army of lawyers to ensure that “progressive” and “collectivist’ policies are implemented across the US.
Elias has been successful in challenging many election results and one of his earliest and most famous victories was challenging the results of the Minnesota senate race in 2008, when he was able to turn an initial 727 vote victory for the Republicans into a 312 winning margin for the Democrats (Senator Al Franken), after a 7 month legal process. Elias was successful after the 2020 election in preventing Trump’s team from challenging election results in 64 different cases.
A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article Democrats Ready Thousands of Lawyers for Final Days of Race. In the article, the authors describe Elias as a “celebrity in Democratic circles for publicly championing his efforts to battle Trump and Republicans in court”. They note:
“More than 400 lawyers have been writing thousands of pages of draft legal pleadings and memos that could be deployed quickly in fast-moving litigation. A larger network of about 10,000 lawyers is on tap to be on the ground and supporting voter protection at polling places across the U.S. Senior advisers have held weekly brainstorming sessions that in effect work like legal game theory, with top lawyers sketching out strategies for addressing a host of hypothetical scenarios that could arise in legal combat over the election results.
The group has focused heavily on planning for potential delays or disruptions to the certification of vote totals, both at the county and state level, and in Congress. They say they are prepared to respond to any efforts to intimidate voters and election workers, including physical unrest on Election Day or during state vote counts afterward.”
It is evident that the Democrats are armed to the teeth with lawyers and plan to throw up to 10,000 more into the mix. It looks a very challenging period after the election, and you can also throw into the mix the likely massive demonstrations if the “Nazi” Trump manages to win.
According to Peter Schweizer on his podcast The Drill Down, currently the Democrats have “more than 400 lawyers largely under the direction of Marc Elias and they have been writing thousands of pages of legal drafts ..to anticipate challenges to voter results, voter access issues in states and they have 10,000 lawyers ready to dive in to challenge results”.
It is worthwhile listening to the 30 minute podcast below.
Conclusions
The US election looks fraught from many viewpoints and I don’t think that we will know the final results for days or weeks. I am anticipating also another “surprise” in the remaining days of the campaign.
I did appreciate one assessment of the Kamala Harris campaign where she was described as “a guest who arrives late, and hasn’t brought any policies”!
Joe Biden provide the Trump campaign with a gift, describing Trump supporters as “garbage”. Trump, never one to waste a media opportunity, had himself filmed in a garbage truck the following day.
Undoubtedly, if Trump does win, the Democrat’s “rent a crowd” will pour out onto the streets and who knows what may happen in response? A recent poll in the UK Times indicated that one quarter of Americans fear civil war after the election.
Joel Skousen of worldaffairsbrief.com provided the following analysis last week, which I thought was worthwhile sharing with my readers:
“1) The Deep State is going to once again steal the election. The same mechanism, and more, is still in place, including use of mail-in ballots, motor-voter registration without proving citizenship, registering hundreds of thousands of illegals, refusing to purge the roles of illegal voters, judges denying any requirement for voter ID, and tabulation computers connected to the internet.
2) Donald Trump has never studied conspiracy and therefore can never tell who is Deep State and who isn’t. He still can’t. Also because of this failing, he can’t detect when he’s being lied to in briefings by the FBI, CIA or NSA, as happened during his first administration. In short, he lacks the knowledge to drain the swamp. And no one knowledgeable about conspiracy, such as myself, is allowed to get near him to advise him because Trump has surrounded himself with mainstream GOP advisors who claim to be loyal to him. I still think there are Deep State spies within his campaign.
3) A nation in severe moral decline can never be made “great again,” without severe repentance, which is not going to happen without a very severe crisis, and maybe not even then.”
It is still a long way until Inauguration Day - 20 January 2025.
Articles That Caught My Attention This Week
Daylight Saving Is Bad For You
I always thought that daylight saving or “summer time” was bad for you. My main evidence is that the idea was dreamed up by a New Zealander. It’s almost enough to condemn the idea before we even start to ask why. However, now there does appear to be real evidence.
An article in the UK Daily Telegraph reported:
“Changing the clocks twice a year is bad for your health, experts have warned.
Members of the British Sleep Society (BSS), a professional organisation for medical, scientific and health workers, have called on the Government to abolish the UK’s twice-yearly clock changes because they are harming the nation’s sleep (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sleep/).
They argue circadian rhythms – the physical, mental, and behavioural changes we experience over 24 hours – are most impacted by clocks moving forward in the spring.
In a statement published in the Journal of Sleep Research, the society “strongly recommends” that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), when clocks go back, runs throughout the year.”
The article quotes Professor Malcolm von Schantz of Northumbria University who said:
GMT “aligns closely with the natural light-dark cycles of the day and night” and “natural daylight in the morning is crucial for maintaining an optimal alignment of our body clocks with day and night, which is essential for optimal sleep and overall health”.
He added: “Restoring permanent Standard Time (GMT) would mean our clocks would be closely aligned to solar time, and while it would mean earlier sunsets in the summer, there would be additional benefits to health from improved sleep and circadian alignment due to increased exposure to morning sunlight from autumn to spring.”
The clincher to me was the additional information in the article that reported a study from the University of Colorado in 2014 which found that heart attacks increased by 24% after the clocks were moved forward, and fell by 21% after the clocks were moved back.
I had thought that my recent health challenges were associated with stress from local council meetings but now I know the real culprit - Daylight Savings Time.
The only solution is to go back to bed.
Unmasking Propaganda - Patrick Wood
Deception is at the heart of the New World Order with people being “persuaded” that all will be well and we can live together in a new “nirvana”, if we just hand power and control over to a group of wealthy and powerful globalists. After all, who wouldn’t trust Bill Gates?
The problem with deception is that is difficult to understand that we are being deceived. Deception is powerful because it looks like the real thing. We can see this with many cases of successful deception with great works of art that have even been certified by art specialists.
I wrote about the challenge of deception in 2022, and share the article again below:
Dealing with deception and unmasking propaganda is a recent topic that was discussed by Patrick Wood.
Patrick Wood has been researching the problems associated with technocracy for the last 50 years. He published an excellent daily newsletter: Technocracy News which you can subscribe to for US$7.50 per month. Sons of Issachar newsletter readers should definitely subscribe to Mr Wood’s newsletter.
Recently, Patrick Wood presented a wonderful podcast with his associate, Mary Baker titled 15 Ways for Recognize and Counter Deceptive Narratives.
Mr Wood discusses the challenge of propaganda, to which we all are subject in our daily lives. He says about propaganda:
”According to The Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, “Since propaganda and public relations both share the goal of using mass communication to influence public perception, it can be easy to conflate the two. Propaganda, however, traffics in lies, misinformation, inflammatory language, and other negative communication to achieve an objective related to a cause, goal or political agenda.”
He cites the “father of propaganda”: Edward Bernays.
“Modern propaganda was defined by Edward Bernays (1891-1995) in the early 1920s. Bernays is credited as being the “father of public relations”, but many of his ideas came from his uncle, psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Neither were friends of society.
According to Bernays, “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society (propaganda) constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
The material from Mr Wood’s podcast was published on freedomsphoenix.com recently and I believe that the perspective is very helpful to understand how various propaganda or deceptive techniques are used to achieve a desired behavioural outcome.
The Techniques of Propaganda
“Fear: The most powerful emotion, fear of loss or physical harm open the mind up to accept the solutions provided by the propagandist, that would not otherwise have been accepted. The technique of fear has been the foundation of all pandemic-related propaganda.
Bandwagon: A claim is made that because everyone else is doing it, so you should too. This is often combined with other propaganda techniques. “Everyone is taking the shot because it is safe and effective; you should take it, too.”
Card Stacking: This technique highlights the “good” information while leaving out the “bad”. In other words, only the facts that support the propagandist’s agenda are presented, while everything else is intentionally suppressed. Censorship is rampant in media, social media and search engines.
Plain Folks: The propagandist implies that he is just an ordinary person like you, with the same dreams and desires, and therefore you should believe him.
The Testimonial: Using an unrelated person such as a celebrity, to give testimony that the propaganda is true and that you can trust them to tell you so. They might also appear as “plain folks” described above.
Glittering Generalities: Sweeping statements that cannot be defined, often containing vague “virtue words”. E.g., “This program will create equity for all” and “We will create millions of green jobs with this budget.”
Name Calling/Deflection: Ad hominem attacks deflect attention away from the propagandist and toward someone else. Al Gore once said concerning global warming, “Deniers deserved to be punished.” Today, it is claimed that America has a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
Transfer: This technique carries over the authority, prestige or acceptance of another group or organization, thus transferring those characteristics over to the propagandist’s program. Many churches, for instance, have been used to promote acceptance of pandemic propaganda by their congregations.
False Analogy: Two concepts are falsely linked together without any cause and effect. For example, “People who question vaccines are anti-vaxxers; Mary does not want the vaccine, so she is an anti-vaxxer.”
Either/Or Fallacy: With “black-and-white” thinking, only two choices are given, even though there might be other acceptable choices. This polarizes the issue and forces you to accept the desired outcome. For instance, “You are either for science or against it.”
Faulty Cause and Effect: This technique suggests that because A follows B, A must cause B. For example, Joe supports gun ownership; murderers often use guns to kill people; therefore, Joe is a killer.
Euphemisms: This is the use of a word or phrase that pretends to communicate but doesn’t. It often makes the bad seem good or the unpleasant seem attractive. For instance, “You aren’t poor, you are economically disadvantaged.”
Loaded Words: Related to name-calling, the propagandist will use extreme words to describe ordinary circumstances. For example, parents who protest at school board meetings are now labeled as “domestic terrorists” who commit “hate crimes”.
Scapegoat: This technique uses guilt-by-association to assign blame to an unrelated person, e.g., economic woes caused by the current administration are blamed on the previous administration; the ongoing pandemic is caused by the unvaccinated.
Logical Disconnect: The World Economic Forum states, “You will own nothing and be happy.” This says that happiness is the result of owning nothing but this is totally illogical from experience. A corollary to this might well be “Homeless people own nothing, therefore they must be happy.”
What you can do about it
All these techniques target our emotions, which in turn drive our behavior. Without our emotional “support” and compliance, the propagandist’s efforts simply fall silently to the floor and die.
Of course, the intelligent citizen does not want anyone to manipulate his emotions for goals that are not his own in the first place. Indeed, no one wants to be fooled, tricked, duped, deceived, used or manipulated by someone else.
There are two very clear antidotes to stopping propaganda dead in its tracks.
First, the propaganda must be objectively identified and seen for what it is. With the techniques listed above, this is very easy to do.
Second, considering what you see, you must exercise self-control over your emotions. Propaganda always demands your emotional involvement to achieve its ends. Do not fall into the propagandist’s trap.
Lastly, when you finally claim victory over any element of propaganda – that is, you’ve identified it and refused emotional involvement with it – it is important to share your understanding and experience with others.
Conclusion
Keep this information handy whenever you are listening, viewing or reading the news. Analyze every article for its “propaganda quotient”. If you notice that one technique being used, take it as a clue and look for others.
If enough Americans understood these simple markers of propaganda, committing to stopping it in its tracks, then life in America could get better in a hurry.
Always remember, propagandists are self- interested, caring nothing about you or the public at-large. In order to overcome it, It is not necessary to know the full reason why it is being played out in the first place; the mere fact that it is propaganda tells you that you want nothing to do with it.”
Real US Inflation Numbers
One of the important challenges facing voters in the West is inflation. In the period immediately before and after COVID, governments made decisions to print money and provide handouts. This came to a head during the first years of the Biden government when trillions of dollars were spent on the fantastically named Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by Joe Biden in August 2022.
You don’t need to go to the Harvard Business School or London School of Economics, to know that rather than reducing inflation, profligate government spending will make prices soar - and so they have. Every consumer in the US knows this and also knows that the Biden-Harris administration is responsible. However, Harris during her election campaign has just tried to sidestep the issue and pretend that the issue wasn’t happening, or that she could solve the problem by applying price controls, agreed by all economists as being certain to worsen the situation.
In worldaffairsbrief.com last week, Joel Skousen cited an interested article that I have shared below. In summary, the official figures for inflation are only a small proportion of what are the real numbers.
“M DOWLING of the Independent Sentinel, writes about how the CPI is manipulated to understate inflation:
In the study, we made several pretty obvious adjustments to the deceptive way officials’ statistics calculate inflation. These nearly doubled inflation during Biden Harris, from 20.9% in the official so-called GDP deflator to 39.9%. It matched nearly perfectly the rise in fast food prices.
So, where are the adjustments? The biggest is housing official statistics. They use a convoluted lagged indicator based on rent, almost as if they’re trying to hide it. House prices increased by more than 40% while mortgage rates have nearly tripled. It is a very large number.
Second is something called hedonic adjustment, which reduces the price of a product if they think it has gotten better. It is a particular problem with regulation, which, of course, they always assume is worth it. So, your energy bill doubled because they mandated windmills. They could say global warming is so important that they adjusted for quality. Your energy bills allegedly went down because you got the electricity plus the climate change.
There is something called indirect purchase, where they don’t even bother measuring price. They use some proxies. For example, health insurance companies take profits and assume rising profits mean higher prices. There could be many reasons for that change: maybe lobbying hospitals, perhaps a mandated vaccine that is not selling anymore.
Taking all these adjustments made by Biden-Harris, it turns out that official numbers underestimated inflation by roughly half. -Meaning inflation has been close to 40%.
Property Taxes Soar 7% Nationwide; Increase Tops 20% In Some States
Property taxes collected on single-family homes in the United States surged almost 7% in 2023, soaring to $363 billion, according to a new report by ATTOM, a real estate data analytics company.
That's almost double the previous year's increase of 3.6% and the steepest jump in five years., Individually, the average homeowner shelled out $4,062 in property taxes last year, about 4% more than in 2022.
'The tax increases were likely connected, at least in part, to inflationary pressures on the cost of operating local governments and schools, along with rising public employee wages and other major expenses,' said ATTOM CEO Rob Barber in a statement. [Forbes via MSN.com]
At some stage late in his campaign, Donald Trump asked a question posed to President Carter by President Reagan in one of their debates. To my mind, this should have been the central question of the campaign: are you better off or worse off than you were 4 years ago?
The article published in the Independent Sentinel demonstrates what all Americans (and all those in the West) understand. Under the Biden-Harris regime, everyone is worse off. If Harris become president and invokes her socialist and high taxing policies, economic disaster is certain.