Rigged and More: A Chronicle of The Most Successful Coup d'état in Human History... Or At Least American History

The debate is over. After a year investigating claims of election fraud the media has determined that any fraud in the 2020 election was far too small to have changed the outcome and Joe Biden legitimately won.  Now we can get back to our normal lives, or whatever passes for normal now… Except it’s fiction.   

In 44 BC Julius Caesar was murdered by Roman senators who claimed to be acting to protect the Republic but were in fact, simply seeking power. Their coup d'état put the final nail in the coffin of a Republic that had been dead in deed if not name for decades. 

Coup d'états differ from revolutions in that they’re generally orchestrated by or include people within government who seize power – often with a narrow use of or threat of violence – that results in a rapid transition of power. Revolutions are often longer affairs that include much of a country’s population and exponentially more bloodshed. 

A common goal of a coup is to keep much of the society and government apparatus intact, but change who’s in charge.  This illusion of continuity is intended to gain the acquiescence of the population so they don’t think they’ve been plunged into a civil war.

And that’s exactly what we got. While Donald Trump does not lay in a bloody toga on the floor of the Senate, America witnessed a coup d’état equally as viscous. Many will deny one took place because their guy won, but make no mistake, virtually every American knows one did, even if only 56% admit it.

The moment the coup began to reveal itself Americans knew something was amiss.  Many went to bed November 3^rd believing Trump won, leading in enough states to secure an electoral victory, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin.  Strangely however, while much of America slept, densely populated Democrat counties like Fulton in Georgia (Atlanta) and Allegheny in Pennsylvania (Pittsburg) “stopped counting” votes only to “restart” later with Joe Biden having a sufficient number of votes to swing the state blue. Similarly Philadelphia stopped “reporting” at 1 AM and later reported Biden numbers sufficient to take the state.    

The morning of the 4th, as cries of fraud came from red areas across the country, the side that had spent years crying “election fraud” suddenly fell silent.  Apparently 2020 had become the “most legitimate election in American history”.

Joseph Stalin who said “Those who vote decide nothing.  Those who count the vote decide everything.”  That’s exactly how we went from being a Constitutional Republic to a banana republic, but rather than the United Fruit Company or the CIA running the coup, it was Mark Zuckerberg, Democrats, the FBI and the media.

Just after Biden was sworn into office Molly Ball of TIME Magazine wrote a glowing paean to the coup:  “Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.”

And as with any good coup, violence was threatened:  “The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country.”  In this context “protests” is a metaphor for Democrat approved violence unleashed by BLM and Antifa across the country.  Ball points out that following Biden’s victory the threatened violence was called off. “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs.”

While Ball’s homage may be insightful, the definitive account of the coup comes from Mollie Hemingway in “Rigged”.  Unlike Ball, who couches everything about the coup in the fiction of patriots seeking to “protect” America from the fascist Donald Trump, Hemingway exposes exactly how the leftist cabal set the table for the coup, and upon its execution unleashed a propaganda machine to pretend the coup never happened.

Hemingway showcases incompetent GOP functionaries like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger empowering Democrats led by the treacherous Marc Elias and Stacy Abrams to make unconstitutional voting rule changes. From corrupt jurists ignoring legislation and others explicitly ignoring the Constitution and allowing arbitrary election rulemaking that favored Democrats to the FBI and the media spending years attacking Trump, Hemingway exposes the coup step by step.  She demonstrates how Mark Zuckerberg wrote a $400 million check and financed the coup d'état that undermined our Republic.  

In perhaps the single most telling line in Rigged, on page 221 Hemingway quotes a reporter for the Wisconsin Spotlight:  “The City of Green Bay literally gave the keys to the election to a Democrat Party operative from New York.” Similar dynamics played out across the country.

The model was simple. Red counties in half a dozen states gave their counts while blue counties stopped counting or reporting.  Once the red totals were in Democrats knew exactly how many votes they needed to “produce” and those numbers magically started coming in. Fulton County (Atlanta) gave Biden a 250,000 margin of victory, enough to win the state by 12,000 votes of 5 million cast. Allegheny Pennsylvania (Pittsburg) gave Biden a 150,000 vote margin, enough to take Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes out of 6.8 million. 

When the dust settled, Biden was declared the 46^th President with “81 million votes” to Trump’s 74 million.  But Presidential elections come down to the Electoral College.  Joe Biden won there because of three states and 103,000 votes:  Pennsylvania, 20 Electors, by 80,000 votes, Georgia, 16 by 12,000, and Arizona, 11 by 11,000 votes. 

After two months of being caricatured and called conspiracy nuts or white nationalists, almost a million frustrated Trump voters went to Washington on January 6^th to demand Congress investigate the election.  After a rally where President Trump explicitly said to “peacefullyand patriotically make your voices heard” a riot with a few thousand people broke out at the Capital and suddenly an “Insurrection” worse than anything “since the Civil War” occurred, and anyone questioning the election was a guilty participant.  That riot, which may have been planned or empowered by the FBI suddenly changed the national conversation from investigating November’s coup to the impeachment of Trump for "incitement of insurrection".  And that was it. End of debate. Biden won and Trump tried to incite a coup and any ideas to the contrary were verboten…

But of course Americans know a lie when they see it and the debate isn’t really over.  When the propagandists say there was no way fraud could have impacted an election with 150 million voters, that’s a red herring.  The cabal behind the coup didn’t have to impact 150 million votes.  All they had to do was impact (or create) 100,000 well placed votes, which is exactly what they did, with the help a a Covid driven hysteria and a "bit" of money.  Mark Zuckerberg funded Democrats in a few states merely had to wait until the red areas reported their totals and then magically produce more votes from their stopped or paused machines. And that’s how it’s done, a real life enactment of Stalin’s adage, and it’s just another day at the office for Democrats. 

Mark Anthony could only eulogize Caesar after the Ides of March, but Donald Trump is still very much with us. We still have an opportunity to reverse this treachery and avert the disaster that naturally follows when the Rule of Man subverts the Rule of Law.  But will we seize it before it’s too late?

What Now - Part 2: Solution to Fraud? Pact of Secession

Earlier in the week I asked the question:  What if Proof of 2020 Presidential Election Fraud Develops? In it I mentioned a number of remedies that have been widely talked about from impeachment to a Pentagon coup to rioting in the streets.

None of those is an ideal solution. Indeed, the first wouldn’t correct the problem, the second would turn the United States into a third world banana republic and the last would bring about a modern version of the bloody chaos that characterized post revolutionary France.  

No, an ideal solution would reverse the inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president and do so while maintaining our Constitutional Republic.

As such, there is another option that could theoretically do that, and thanks to TV shows from Perry Mason to Law & Order it’s based on concepts most Americans are familiar with: “fraud vitiates everything” and “fruit of the poison tree”.  The former, based on the Supreme Court ruling UNITED STATES v. THROCKMORTON (98 US 61 – Supreme Court 1878); states that “There is no question of the general doctrine that fraud vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents, and even judgments.” That essentially means that in contracts – and an election is nothing if not a contract – fraud makes them invalid. Everyone knows if you sign a contract based on fraudulent information, that contract is invalid.  Further, from that comes “void ab initio” which means that fraud from the beginning taints everything resulting from it.  No doubt most of us have heard a TV lawyer seeking to throw out evidence against their client because the search itself or the information upon which the warrant was based, was fraudulent.  It’s called the doctrine of “Fruit of a poison tree” from NARDONE V. UNITED STATES, (308 U.S. 338 – Supreme Court 1939) which states that if a tree is poisonous, so too is its fruit. (H/T to Andrea Widburg, Donna Palen and Al Simon)

All of this means that once the fraud is demonstrated, the election is invalid; Joe Biden is legally not president and every action of the Biden administration has undertaken is void as if it never happened.  That of course has never been done in a presidential election but it’s occurred a handful of times in lower elections.  The fly in the ointment of course is that all of this it requires a court, and eventually the Supreme Court to rule that the election was indeed fraudulent.  Given the Supreme Court’s general (but very selective) reluctance to wade into political areas – particularly highly volatile ones – and this particular Court’s demonstrated cowardice, it’s unlikely that they would even consider the matter.

Which I think, leaves us with this:  If the Constitution provides no specific remedy to the bastardization of the Constitution itself, something new must be done.  As the Founding Fathers did in 1776, it may be necessary to rewrite the playbook. And that rewritten playbook, while not a new Declaration of Independence, is a tentative Pact of Secession. This pact would be among the states whose rightful votes should have gone to Donald Trump. These states should make it clear that the rights of their citizens to a Constitutional federal government have been infringed upon and if Congress does not remedy the situation they will, in unison, secede.

This Pact would not literally be secession… it would be the announcement of a proposed action that Congress would have the opportunity to avoid by rectifying the demonstrated Constitutional deficits of the 2020 election.  The reality is there is no blueprint for rectifying those deficits, but that is because Congress, the states and the Supreme Court allowed an unconstitutional inauguration to occur in the first place.  Nonetheless, the theft of the highest office in the land simply cannot stand.  As New York, California and a variety of blue states are seeing play out in their streets today, if you allow thieves to steal with impunity, if you allow thugs to harass and assault with impunity, you get more of each. The same holds true with the fraud of an election and the usurping of the apparatus of government and the coercive powers that come with it. If this theft is allowed to stand then no American can go forward with confidence in the nation’s elections and the system based on them.  Once again, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work. The proof of that can be seen in the fact that the old Soviet Union, Cuba, China and most other dictatorships regularly have constitutions that promise freedoms and rights to their citizens that are rarely actually respected. Words on a paper mean nothing if the government is not bound by them and the citizens have no confidence in them. 

This is, as the British might say, a bloody mess. Indeed the last time secession played a pivotal role in American history that’s exactly what we got.  This however does not have to be that. Spurred by a Pact of Secession, Congress will have an opportunity, in concert with the states themselves, to address the demonstrated fraud and rectify the deficit of the election of 2020 in a cool, logical and peaceful manner.  But they need to understand that once the fire from the smoke of November 4th is demonstrated, the American people will not sit idly by and watch their Constitution shredded.  Too many have paid too high a price so that Americans could live under the umbrella of liberty it provides to allow such a transgression to prevail.  

What Now - Part 1: What if We Find The Fire From the Smoke of Election Fraud?

If the last month has taught us anything, today’s conspiracy theory could easily be tomorrow’s commonsense truth. The speed at which the Wuhan Lab theory as the source of the Covid virus went from “thoroughly debunked” to “Viable” and “Probable” in the media was extraordinary. Indeed, the media scorned the possible source of the most economically destructive virus in history – one that is credited with killing 3 million people – because they didn’t like the then-President of the United States!

Despite the fact that the lab in Wuhan was one of the only places on earth where scientists were studying such viruses, that 3 Wuhan employees went to the hospital in November 2019 with what turned out to be Covid symptoms, that the NIH had actually been funding “gain of function” research in Wuhan focusing specifically on the transmission of such viruses to humans… we were told the Wuhan “China virus” theory was a racist conspiracy theory!

As much damage as Covid did – and far worse, the “lockdowns” used to inflict COVID's damage – that’s nothing compared to the damage another “conspiracy” has done and will do. That, of course, is the “thoroughly debunked” notion that the election of 2020 was stolen, and that Joe Biden is in the Oval Office today because of election fraud. But of course that’s just some tin hat conspiracy theory. We’ve been told that “There’s no evidence of election fraud” and Trump “Lost Nearly 60 Election Fights In Court.” The latter of course is fiction.

Given that we heard similar things for the last year about the origins of Covid, the question is, what happens when proof unequivocally demonstrates that the election was indeed stolen?

The smoke for that conclusion has been around since the wee hours of November 4th. The stopped counting in key states on election night. Mark Zuckerberg’s wholesale purchase of the voting apparatus in key states and counties. The unconstitutional changes to voting laws that crisscrossed the country… many empowered by the politicization of Covid... And then of course there is the TIME magazine piece that laid out in black and white the “inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election”, chronicling widespread coordination of everyone from the Democrat party, Silicon Valley, BLM, unions, the Chamber of Commerce and various other players to get rid of Donald Trump.

All that has been missing has been the CSI level proof of the fire itself. Of course, given the depth and breadth of the Swamp, it may never come to light. But then it might. Currently in Arizona and Wisconsin audits are being done of the 2020 election.

So let’s imagine that somehow, integrity rules the day, and both states under audit produce rock-solid proof that the election in their states was stolen; what then? Technically, nothing. Arizona had 11 electoral votes and Wisconsin had 10. Together they represent 21 electoral votes and Joe Biden was declared the winner by 74 votes. In order for anything to change there must be a difference of at least 38 votes flipped from Biden to Trump.

But let’s say even one of those states produces demonstrable proof of election fraud. At that point the Republican legislatures of other battleground states that exhibited strange activity on election night… Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan would be under a great deal of pressure to look into the integrity of their own elections. Suddenly, with an additional 52 electoral votes in play, things look a bit different.

Let’s further assume that the legislatures of Georgia and Pennsylvania determine that there was sufficient fraud in their states to flip the state’s vote to Donald Trump. With Arizona and Wisconsin, those states would bring the total to 57 electoral votes flipped from Biden to Trump, changing the totals to 249 to 289 and leaving Trump with a majority.

What then? Can a state reverse its electoral vote after certification and counting? Can states recall their electors post-inauguration? Can Congress meet and redo the vote count six months after an inauguration? None has ever been done and there is nothing in the Constitution about doing so. Can the House impeach the President for the fraud? Even if the GOP controlled the Senate a conviction would be unlikely because there’s probably little to connect Joe Biden with the actual fraud done on his behalf.

Can the Supreme Court order a new election? While the Constitution gives the Court no such power, in the Bizarro world of modern America that certainly seems to be no barrier. It is unlikely, however, as the Justices had two clear opportunities to resolve this problem and did nothing. When Pennsylvania Republicans sued seeking to throw out the clearly unconstitutional changes to voting law, the Court demurred. Unconstitutional changes such as these are of course the very basis for the Texas lawsuit that the Supreme Court refused to hear after the election. One state allowing their election to be stolen does indeed negatively impact the rights of citizens of another state if that activity results in a fraudulent president who runs the government of the United States under which all American citizens are governed.

Once the fraud has been demonstrated, America is going to find itself in a situation where it doesn’t appear that there is any Constitutional remedy in place. Are Americans simply supposed to acquiesce to the theft and allow the fraudulent president to be the actual president for the next three years?

No. That would be like a thief stealing your identity and looting your bank account and then once discovered, being allowed to keep it because, as we all remember from elementary school, “possession is 9/10ths of the law.” That was wrong in elementary school and it’s wrong in the Oval Office.

What can be done when the Constitution doesn’t address a bastardization of the constitutional process? Does a military junta take control and put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office? Umm… No! Does the 25th Amendment somehow come into play? No, because that would not remedy the situation. Does Biden resign? Unlikely, and again, it wouldn’t remedy the situation.

A Convention of the States as outlined by Article V of the Constitution? Maybe, but that’s a long process and would likely not occur within the timeframe of the next election.

How about a shadow government? Does Donald Trump build a replica of the Oval Office at Mar-a-Lago and show the world what a real president would do in whatever circumstances the imposter president finds himself in?

Do true patriots take to the streets and use violence and intimidation to wreak havoc from sea to shining sea the way BLM and Antifa did last year, and maintain it until the Democrats capitulate?

None of those ideas is an ideal solution. An ideal solution would essentially reverse the inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president.

Many pundits are suggesting that Republicans should dig deep and focus on 2022, both at the local and the state level so that the GOP can take back the House and the Senate. While that’s true, it’s not sufficient because it doesn’t address the fraud in the first place.

If it’s possible to steal the presidency with impunity, what office in the nation is beyond reach? The simple answer is none, and that matters because the government has police power and once the Constitution becomes superfluous, the coercive powers of government suddenly have no limits. And for those who say that the Constitution still stands, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work.  

100 Days into Mark Zuckerberg's Latest Acquisition

Government sometimes needs help. It can’t do everything… and it most certainly can’t do everything well. Some Americans have stepped up and use their resources and expertise to help government function more effectively.

An example of this is Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to fund “Special Assistant Attorneys Generals.” in the actual Attorneys Generals offices in half a dozen large cities across the country. Those SAAGs are tasked with a specific focus on climate change and act as liaisons between AG leadership and NGO’s and other interested parties. The goal was to step up and move the issue of climate change forward in the face of Congress refusing to move on the threat.

Another more recent effort to address government dysfunction had to do with voting. After the chaos of 2000, the Russian influence scandal of 2016 and complaints about lines and closed precincts after almost every election, it was clear that America’s voting system could use some assistance.

As might be appropriate for the high tech world we live in, it was a master of the Silicon Valley universe who stepped into the breach to provide assistance to the very low tech world of voting; Mark Zuckerberg. He and his wife contributed over $350 million to the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civil Life to pay election workers, drop boxes, foreign language information, train poll workers, rent polling locations and count votes during the 2020 elections.

The result was a far more robust election functionality in the locales where the money was focused. For CFCL it was what you would call a home run. Take Maricopa County Arizona for example. The county, with its approximately 2 million votes – including Phoenix – represents over 60% of Arizona’s electorate. CFCL spent approximately $3 million in the county. The result? Much higher turnout. Donald Trump received 995,665 votes, 250,000 more than he did in 2016 for a 33% increase. Joe Biden garnered 1,040,774 votes, a whopping 340,000 or 48% more than Hillary Clinton did four years before. Zuckerberg and CFCL certainly had an impact.

To see how much, look at the rest of Arizona where CFCL spent 30% less. Trump’s 2020 total grew by 32% (compared to 2016) while Biden improved on Clinton’s total by 38%. In Maricopa County where Zuckerberg spent $3 million the Democrat candidate increased his total by 48% while the GOP candidate grew his by 33%, a difference of 15%. In the rest of the state the difference between 2016 and 2020 was 6%. CFCL essentially boosted Maricopa County’s turnout by 9% compared to the rest of the state.

If a difference of 9% between Maricopa and the rest of the state doesn’t sound like much, remember that billion dollar casino empires have been built on games where the house has much less of an advantage and trillion dollar empires have been built with less than half that.   

That CTCL model played itself out in a handful of states that gave the election to Biden. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia. In each state CTCL spent millions of dollars in heavily Democrat counties and drove almost unprecedented increases in voter turnout and troubling vote irregularities.

Today, in this particular case, half the country might suggest all of that is Constitutional. In fact, it’s not.

In the 1960’s the United States was in the midst of an upheaval of monumental proportions where racism and Jim Crow laws were being challenged virtually everywhere. People were being treated differently with the government’s imprimatur. The Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts were passed specifically to ensure the Constitutional requirement that people were treated equally. MLK’s I Have a Dream speech epitomized the goal of the journey that the United States embarked on over the next few decades.

Fundamentally Americans understood that people should be treated equally, particularly by government. Government has a power over you that no store or school or hotel does. Government can raise your taxes, impact your ability to open a business, dictate where your kids go to school, and most importantly, put you in prison.

As such, Americans expect government to treat everyone equally, and according to a report released by the Amistad Project, Zuckerberg’s CTCL not only didn’t do that, the expenditures were in direct violation to federal law:

This privatization of elections undermines the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires state election plans to be submitted to federal officials and approved and requires respect for equal protection by making all resources available equally to all voters.

The provision of Zuckerberg-CTCL funds allowed these Democrat strongholds to spend roughly $47 per voter, compared to $4 to $7 per voter in traditionally Republican areas of the state.

While there are most certainly areas of government where private / public partnerships can play a role – things like feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and substance abuse aid – none of those things involves the police power of government or determining the representation in the government itself. Bloomberg’s efforts involve the former and Zuckerberg’s impact the latter.

Government is supposed to be objective in the execution of the laws and by allowing private entities to illegally do the various functions of the state, the government is essentially putting its thumb on the scales that keep the Republic balanced. Just as it would be unconstitutional for Exxon to fund the enforcement actions of the EPA, the NRA to fund agents of the ATF or the Proud Boys to do enforcement work for the Border Patrol, it’s equally unconstitutional for billionaires or anyone else unaccountable to the people to be bankrolling election processes and activities.

No doubt had Donald Trump won with similar assistance by a nonprofit funded by Larry Ellison, John Schnatter or the late Sheldon Adelson, the nation would be subject to wall to wall cries that the election was fraudulent and that a Donald Trump was a fascist dictator. And indeed that would have been true. Had GOP aligned “nonprofits” provided training and helped counting votes in predominantly red counties and precincts, Antifa, BLM and Democrats would have “protested” and likely burned Washington to the ground. Instead, as it was, in the face of the clear theft of the most important election of our time a few hundred Trump supporters broke into the Capital and took selfies with the Capitol Police, put their feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and caused minor mayhem.

And so today as we “celebrate” the first 100 days of the fraudulent Biden administration, it might be useful to sit back and recognize exactly what Mark Zuckerberg's purchase of the 2020 election foretells. Unless this unconstitutional election is somehow set aside, or laws put in place to make sure the theft is never repeated, we will have crossed the Rubicon into a post Augustan Rome where the Imperial Throne is up for grabs to whoever comes up with the most gold for the vote takers and counters. Given that Kamala Harris is the next in line… it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t have our own Year of the Four Emperors.

The Democratic Party - A Picture America can do without...

Sometimes when we look at events in isolation we see them as tragic or despicable or just lamentable. When we look at them together as a group however we come away with a completely different impression. They can seem to form a pattern or a picture that was hardly discernible when seen in isolation. The following is a collection of just such events.

• Earlier this year Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, seeking to save the state from financial ruin, set about to adjust the way the state dealt with public employee unions. The result was a demonstration of force and the threat of violence from the unions. Union minions took over the state capitol, intimidated legislators and in the end caused millions of dollars of damage to the capitol itself.



• This year has seen a wave of flash mob attacks around the country where youths utilize social media to coordinate attacks on stores or random people. From Chicago to Dallas to Philadelphia to Washington these attacks represent something different. Many of the attacks were caught on tape. The thing that jumps out at one is that many of the criminals had smiles on their uncovered faces. They were literally having fun destroying or stealing others property or harming the innocent store clerk or random passerby. In a mirror image of the riots in the United Kingdom last month, these adolescents seemed to be sociopaths in the sense that they had no connection to civilized society.



• The voters of Indiana’s 7th District must be proud. Their congressman, Andre Carson last week told an audience in Miami that some in Congress would “love to see us as second-class citizens” and “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me…hanging on a tree.” The Congressman is accusing Tea Partiers and fellow Congressmen of being murdering racists. The most despicable thing about the Congressman’s comments is not that he said them in the first place, but that his comments aroused approval of the members of audience. In addition, so acceptable to Democrats are the Congressman’s statements that he was more than willing to defend them once they made it into the public square.



• At this year’s Labor Day celebration in the Democrat run disaster that is Detroit, Teamster’s Union President Jimmy Hoffa said this: “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong!” Hoffa was literally declaring war on the Tea Party. This was not delivered in the dark corner of a union hall somewhere but in front of thousands of people as well as the President of the United States, not to mention a number of news cameras. In his remarks that followed, President Obama not only did not distance himself from Hoffa’s remarks, but acknowledged him by name as one of the “Proud sons and daughters of Michigan representing working people here and across the country.”



• Finally there are the longshoremen in Washington State. Five hundred members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union stormed the Port of Longview last Thursday and destroyed the property of EGT, LLC, a company with whom they are involved in a labor dispute following EGT’s use of workers from a different union. What’s worse, the union thugs threatened a policeman and took six guards hostage for a number of hours. The union’s actions defied a federal restraining order issued the previous week against it after the union was accused of assault and death threats. While the union officially branded Thursday’s action a “wildcat” action over which they had no control, the day before the ILWU President Bob McEllrath and 18 others were arrested and vowed to return.

The thing that stands out about these various events is not that violence occurs or that people use despicable rhetoric to try and gain support for their unsupportable platforms or positions. No, the thing that stands out about them is that the people at the center of these various events seem surprisingly comfortable doing what they were doing or saying what they were saying in full view of God and Creation - not to mention the general public via some video cameras.

Few of the flash mobbing youths are concerned enough about anonymity to even bother to make the most rudimentary attempt at covering their faces. The Wisconsin Capitol had an air of Mardi Gras about it as demonstrators went about defacing state property in full view of news cameras from around the country. Jimmy Hoffa felt entirely comfortable offering the President of the United States his “army” in order to “take these sons of bitches out” in front of thousands of people and numerous cameras.

While criminals and manipulative politicians are not particularly unique or new, what is new is the brazenness with which they perpetrate their crimes or throw around demonstrably false charges or exhort their followers to violence. Other than the longshoremen who used violence under the cover of night, none of these people seem to be a bit concerned with a threat of sanction or consequence.

Individually these events are disheartening to say the least. Together however they are something more. Together these events form a picture of the modern Democratic Party. Government welfare programs, identity politics and union thuggery. This is a picture the United States can do without.

Unless America wants these anecdotes to become the norm, a change will have to be made. A century of failed policies should be enough to send the Democratic Party to the dustbin of history. Let’s hope 2012 is the beginning of the end for the party of big government, confiscatory taxes and anti-social behavior. Now that's a picture worth seeing.

Wisconsin proves it's possible to save America...

After spending two years touring the United States in the 1830’s Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” One wonders what he might have thought had he spent the last six months in Wisconsin.

The road Wisconsinites have traveled since November of last year may well indeed foretell the future of America.

Everything began in November when, fed up with fiscal irresponsibility on the part of Democrats, Wisconsin voters handed to the GOP not only the Governor’s mansion, but both the House and the Senate as well. The mandate was clear: Get government spending under control.

The state’s new Governor and legislature hit the ground running with the Senate working on the Governor’s bill that would strip government employee unions of the ability to negotiate for benefits and forced those state employees to contribute more to their health and pension funds. More consequentially it made the paying of union dues voluntary rather than mandatory.

Governor Walker was vilified and became the center of a firestorm of protest. On February 17th the 14 Democrats in the Senate decided to run away to Illinois, depriving the body the required 20 member quorum necessary to pass any fiscal bills.

Almost immediately the Capitol came under siege by a marauding horde of leftists bent supporting the Democrats and stifling the will of the people.

By March 9th, having had enough of the obfuscation by the Democrats, the GOP senators stripped the bill of all fiscal elements and proceeded to pass the bill after providing two hours notice online. (Only fiscal legislation requires a quorum.) The Assembly passed the bill the next day and Governor Walker immediately signed it into law…

Democrats immediately claimed the law was invalid and quickly found a state judge who would support their claim despite the fact that the Senate clearly did not violate the state’s Open Meeting’s law nor internal Senate rules. Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi at first attempted to stop the law from being published and then issued an order stopping any further implementation of the law.

The real question with Judge Sumi’s ruling is: Are there any limits on the power of the courts? Apparently the judiciary has the right to insert itself in the inner workings of a co-equal branch of government, in this case the legislature. If the Judge’s order is allowed to stand, if it is above even its co-equal branches of government then there is truly no place a judge's gavel cannot reach, not within the legislature, the executive branch nor one would expect, into absolutely every aspect of the lives of citizens. Who could stop them?

At this point democracy in Wisconsin had become a farce. The people vote; the elected officials attempt to do what they were elected to do, all the while being pilloried and attacked by opponents. They succeed in passing the law according to the constitution and suddenly a member of the judiciary rips the reins of power from the people. Soon the case finds its way in front of the state Supreme Court.

The witching hour came last Tuesday when Justice David Prosser was up for reelection to the Supreme Court, which is currently composed of four generally conservative justices and three progressives. Union and other leftist organizations from around the country poured tens of millions of dollars into Wisconsin to support Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, a progressive who could be considered a sure fire vote to sustain Judge Sumi’s ill advised ruling.

The question on everyone’s mind leading up to the election was, would the citizens of Wisconsin vote to support their elected officials or would they cave into the intimidation and lies of the unions? While a recount seems likely, in what was by far the most highly participated in judicial election in Wisconsin history, it appears that the citizens of Wisconsin have decided that they have had enough of the thuggish behavior of its public employee unions and Justice Prosser will be retuning to the Supreme Court.

If this resurgence of fiscal responsibility and internal fortitude was not enough to solidify Wisconsin’s position as the leading light in the very winnable battle to save the Republic, there are a few more things that should make the state’s position crystal clear:

1. Wisconsin voters gave 3 term incumbent Russ Feingold the boot in November.
2. Paul Ryan’s district is in Wisconsin, and Ryan is the leading voice in the GOP on fiscal responsibility.
And perhaps most tellingly:
3. Wisconsin citizens are not only withstanding the union thug tactics, they are actually pushing back…

Many of us feel like America is approaching a precipice on the edge of an abyss from which there would be no return. We could do much worse than look to the example set by Wisconsin’s citizens and politicians (or at least some of them…) to remind us that it is possible to pull back from the edge regardless of the foes lined up against you. I think Tocqueville would not have been surprised.