“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Happy New Year from anebbandflow. In closing 2020, I've shared a few satirical, sarcastic and just plain ain't-that-the-damn-truth pieces with some friends, like these...
"We noticed that most of the respondents who called 2020 the worst year also enjoyed delicious food being delivered to them for 8 months while they sat on their couches with the air conditioning on and binge-watched shows the whole time," said one researcher.
"While we understand it hasn't been easy, we also found very few instances of Viking raids, Black Plague, famine, world war, using rotary telephones, needing to look things up in a physical dictionary, slavery, people being burned at the stake, walking miles to school, living in caves, sleeping on the ground, ice ages, Nazi holocausts, civil war, infant mortality, global floods, ethnic cleansing, using leaves as toilet paper, using leeches as medicine, using wooden mallets as an anesthetic, fighting wild saber-tooth tigers, cannibalism, occupation by the Persian Empire... what was I talking about again? Oh yeah-- most people in 2020 never experienced any of those things, so comparatively speaking it's been a pretty decent year!"
Related link: The Babylon Bee's Predictions For 2021
Trying to figure out who’s Phony of the Year in our mad, Machiavellian third millennium may seem like attempting to identify the chief mosquito in the Everglades. There certainly is no shortage of people today who take phoniness, pretentiousness, superficiality, and deceit to Clintonian heights. But after analyzing the landscape of pseudo-elite lies, I’ve compiled a list of contenders — and have drawn a conclusion.
After elaborating on a lengthy list from the "Bodacious Bookshelf Boys" and "Hilarious Hilaria" (among others, like Krug and Harris) to the "COVID Con Artists" (officials such as Governor Gavin Newsom, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein (and Fauci), and others tacitly encouraged large BLM protests/riots; favored big business over small; and, most tellingly, were repeatedly caught violating their own mask, social-distancing, and travel pre/proscriptions), the "Great and Powerful Fao Chi" finally took the top spot...
Given the above Middle Kingdom moniker by Web wise guys alluding to his China ties, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s high-profile phoniness rivals Harris’s. The octogenary, 52-year bureaucrat flip-flops more than a politician, a phenomenon I documented in my essay, “The Many Masks of Anthony Fauci.” He has probably donned a few more, too, since my exposé went to press in October. But he did essentially admit in early May that he was lying, about mask use in that instance — and now he has done it again.
On Christmas Eve, the media-loving (and loved) head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases admitted that he lied to the American people about herd immunity, though he apparently characterized it as “moving the goalposts.” ...
Dishonorable mention goes to American academia, Hollywood, and, in particular, mainstream media. The latter, of course, may seem like a lock for the phoniness title, but their duplicity transcends 2020: It’s more deserving of the Phony of the Century award. ... But my choice for Phony of the Year award is...
Lockdown Tony Fauci. It’s not just his slipperiness, poise before the camera, his capacity to make every lie sound as convincing as the previous nine, and that he was complicit in visiting upon us one of American history’s greatest blunders: lockdowns and generally obscurantist China virus policy. It’s that he did all that while (with media help) elevating himself to demigod status. ... And you can’t beat a guy like that (except with a stick — and I’d like a go). So Dr. Anthony Fauci is 2020’s Phony of the Year.
Related link: What’s Fauci Reading? We Take Another Look at Celebrity Bookshelves
...but the real challenge for not only our New Year, but more importantly our Republic (if we can keep it), comes in a few short days, as Levin explains...
The 2020 presidential election was, in several targeted battleground states, an unconstitutional electoral exercise. Even putting aside evidence of significant fraud, virtually none of which received a hearing by our courts, events leading up to and including the November national election constituted a radical and grave departure from the federal electoral system adopted by the framers of the Constitution and the state ratification conventions. Now, let's be clear: None of this matters to the Democrat Party, since it and its surrogates perpetrated these unconstitutional acts... Nor does it matter to the media, which is utterly illiterate on the subject and unequivocally supports the supposed outcome in any event. But it should be of great moment and concern to the people of this country and especially to congressional Republicans in both Houses, for if the latter do not at least confront and challenge this lawlessness on January 6, when Congress meets to count the electors, it will be the GOP's undoing and, simultaneously, the undoing of our presidential electoral system. Ultimately, it will be the people of the United States who love our republic who will be the losers. ...
Specifically, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the federal Constitution could not be more explicit. It states, in pertinent part: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress ..." This language was purposeful. During the Constitutional Convention, there were various proposals suggested for electing a president. Should the president be directly elected by the people? That proposal was rejected out of concern that such a purely democratic process could be hijacked by a temporary majority. Should the president be chosen in the first instance from within the national legislature? That proposal was also rejected on grounds of separation of powers. Should the judiciary play a role in the selection of the president? That idea was dispensed with as being the most objectionable, as judges were to be the least political of all public officials. The framers deliberatively and with much thought created the Electoral College process, in which the people and their elected legislatures — both state and national — would play important roles. But the electoral process rested first and foremost on the state legislatures directing how the electors would be chosen. The reason: While rejecting the direct election of a president, the framers concluded that the state legislatures were closest to the people in their respective states and would be the best representatives of their interests. At no time did the framers even raise the possibility that governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state, election boards, administrators, etc., would play any significant role in the electoral process. Indeed, certain of those offices did not even exist. Moreover, as I said, the courts were rejected out of hand. Thus, such an important power was to be exercised exclusively by the state legislatures.
After the 2016 election, the Democrat Party, its various surrogate groups, and eventually the Biden campaign unleashed hundreds of lawsuits and an unrelenting lobbying campaign in key states that had previously been won by President Trump, taking unconstitutional measures intended to stop President Trump from winning these states in the 2020 election, thereby literally undoing this critical constitutional provision. What had been carefully crafted at the Constitutional Convention and clearly spelled out in the Constitution was the main obstacle to defeating President Trump and winning virtually all future presidential elections. The problem for the Democrats was that in several of these battleground states, the Republicans controlled the legislatures, while the Democrats controlled state executive offices. The Constitution was not on their side. Therefore, they used the two branches of government that were to have no role in directing the appointment of electors to eviscerate the role of the Republican legislatures.
Levin specifically and meticulously reviews how these explicit constitutional provisions were violated in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia (which is worth reading into), but does so to point out that "key, if not core, aspects of state election laws were fundamentally altered in contravention of the explicit power granted to the state legislatures and, therefore, in violation of the federal Constitution and the process set forth for directing the selection of electors," thus setting up the various opportunities and circumstances for the counting of illegitimate ballots, provided "not by state legislatures but by those who unilaterally changed the election laws" to inevitably benefit one party.
Mark also briefly discusses the United States Supreme Court's flat-out FAILURE "to make clear to the states that they must comply with the plain language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution," before returning to the point of the piece, which is the last constitutional fail-safe in the maintenance of electoral lawfulness...
Despite what has been reported and repeated, the president is not actually or officially chosen on Election Day. The president is not chosen upon the certification of electors by the states. The process ends in Congress. And on Jan. 6, Congress — following both the Constitution and its own procedural law — makes the final decision on who is to be president and vice president of the United States. Of course, in every election in my lifetime, up to now, while there have been some controversies, the process has proceeded without much attention. But this time is different, as it must be. The Democrat Party, its surrogates, and eventually the Biden campaign instituted an unprecedented legal and lobbying campaign, mostly under the radar, as it was not well covered by the usual media outlets, to undermine our Constitution, the Republican state legislatures, and the Trump re-election campaign, in favor of Biden. ... The Democrat Party has done severe damage to the nation's electoral system, to the point where the state legislatures are now in the position of having the least input on the manner in which elections are held and federal electors are chosen — the complete opposite of what the Constitution compels and the framers unequivocally intended. ...
If this outcome is allowed to stand without a fight on Jan. 6, it is difficult to see how this can be fixed. The Democrats will view this as a sure sign that they are free to do more and even worse. It will become extremely difficult for Republicans to win nationwide elections (something the ten or so GOP senators who wish to run for president should keep in mind). It will also become increasingly difficult to win a Republican majority in the Senate. And the 2020 constitutional violations will be used as a baseline for even more unconstitutional manipulations of the electoral system. The Democrat Party's goal is to turn the nation's electoral system into the one-party rule that exists in virtually all blue states, especially California with its supermajorities.
Not withstanding the high hurdles, Levin says win, lose or draw, congressional Republicans must act on behalf of our constitutional republic against a lawless party that seeks to undo our electoral system, in addition to eliminating leglislative barriers to their radical agenda, on top of packing the Court and the Senate...
This is the same party that did not care that it had no hope of removing President Trump in the Senate, but impeached him anyway — on the most specious of grounds. They are playing for keeps and destroying our constitutional system, for which they have little regard. I am well aware that it takes a majority of both Houses to send the election of the president to the House of Representatives, where each delegation gets one vote, an extremely difficult hurdle.
Nonetheless, it is not asking too much for the Republicans to uphold the United States Constitution — which they all took an oath to do — and to fight to preserve and protect the plain words set forth in Article II. They must make the case to and on behalf of the American people. And they must make it clear to the Democrats that we, the people, who believe in this Republic, will not roll over! Now, let's see how many statesmen there are among Republican members of Congress.
It's looking like there might be at least 140 thus far! And despite Fake Tapper's hissy, this certification isn't sailing through without debate...
2020 was a wild ride with some quite unexpected twists and turns, not all of them wonderful. I’m sure many of you watched in disbelief as the Democrats, aided and abetted by the press and their RINO enablers, attempted to openly and notoriously steal a presidential election. Yet despite what the press keeps trumpeting, this is not yet decided.
More and more evidence is coming into the public domain. This evidence is of such magnitude that, despite the best efforts of the Federal Judiciary to abdicate their duties, over 100 GOP lawmakers have signed on to dispute the vote count in several swing states. At least one GOP Senator has also signed on, which means the issue must now be debated by both houses of Congress.
...and may perhaps include Team Trump presenting ‘specific evidence’ during said debate, so stand by and stand ready. It's certainly a New Year, let's fight for it!
Related links: As Pence Moves to Dismiss Election Lawsuit, The Number of House GOP Reps Objecting to 2020 Results Skyrockets
January 6: The Righteous Republican Challenge
Never Give Up
Why I will not accept Joe Biden as president
ADDENDUM: Just read it...
