PP NewsBrief: 2021-05-31

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

========

Biden wind energy projects outsourcing jobs to Europe

"Joe Biden has promised that his push for renewable energy will create more manufacturing jobs for Americans. He was reported saying, “there is simply no reason the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing. No reason.”

Except, in reality, most of the manufacturing jobs will actually be created in Europe.

The Vineyard Wind project, off the coast of Massachusetts, is expected to produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in New England by 2023. The windfarm is a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Inc. which is part of the Iberdrola group.

According to the managing director of Iberdola Renewables Offshore, Jonathon Cole, smaller components will be manufactured locally, but the bigger parts will not.

Insiders say it could take years before developers can commit to building new American factories. To get things moving, developers would need to see a deep pipeline of approved U.S. projects, along with a clear set of regulatory incentives like federal and state tax breaks.

Christy Guthman, commercial leader of U.S. offshore at General Electric’s renewable division, also said that opening a factory would be costly and time consuming. It would require permits and large amounts of space near the coast.

Guthman’s company is set to supply Vineyard Wind with 62 turbines. However, the major parts for those turbines, which are twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, will be made in its factories in France."

It's a bit amusing to see this argument trotted out for a project that's supposedly focused on planet and not profits. Of course that's all these large scale renewable projects ever were about so it's not surprising.

========

Court sides with white male restaurant owner who wasn’t ‘disadvantaged’ enough for Biden’s coronavirus aid

"Had Vitolo been a member of certain “disadvantaged” groups – “black Americans,” “Hispanic Americans,” “Asian Pacific Americans,” “Native Americans,” and “subcontinent Asian Americans,” he would have qualified. He wasn’t, and he sued the Small Business Administration.

An appeals judge in Ohio ruled in his favor on Thursday. Amul Thapar, the first-ever federal judge of South Asian descent, ruled that the Biden administration’s allocation of aid by race and gender violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. The law creating the fund – and its discriminatory provisions – was passed by Congress in March in a party-line vote.

“The stark realities of the Small Business Administration’s racial gerrymandering are inescapable,” Thapar wrote, slamming the “scattershot” manner in which the Biden administration decided which races to prioritize. For example, “black, Hispanic, or Native American” applicants are considered disadvantaged. “Subcontinent Asian Americans” are only presumed disadvantaged if they “have origins from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands, or Nepal.”

“Imagine two childhood friends – one Indian, one Afghan,” he explained. “Both own restaurants, and both have suffered devastating losses during the pandemic. If both apply to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, the Indian applicant will presumptively receive priority consideration over his Afghan friend. Why? Because of his ethnic heritage.”

Judge Bernice Donald, an Obama appointee, dissented, arguing that selective preferences are the best way “to remediate past discrimination.” Donald also called the relief fund a “carefully targeted measure,” and argued that “minority-owned businesses were more vulnerable to economic distress than businesses owned by white entrepreneurs.”

However, Thapar’s ruling concluded bluntly: the “way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

...

The Small Business Association isn’t the only government department opening its purse wider for certain races. Biden’s American Rescue Plan provides billions of dollars of debt relief to “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers, in the name of remedying “systemic racism.” A group of white farmers has already sued the Farm Service Agency and secretary of agriculture over this, setting up another constitutional showdown that, based on Thursday’s ruling in Ohio, they will likely win.

One of the farmers, a disabled man with two prosthetic legs, called the American Rescue Plan “out-and-out racist.”

“Everything that we have all learned growing up is racism is wrong, and now, all of a sudden, the federal government seems to think that racism is acceptable in certain ways. And it should never be acceptable,” he stated."

========

Dems stage surprise walk-out at Texas State House to block vote on voting rules bill, governor calls for special session

"Senate Bill 7 (SB7) would enact a major overhaul of the electoral process in Texas. Written along lines not unlike those of similar bills passed in Georgia and Florida, it became a focal point for partisan clashes on the state and federal levels. Republicans said the reform was meant to protect the integrity of elections from fraud, while Democrats said it was meant to suppress the vote of black Texans, with some branding it the “new Jim Crow,” in reference to the system of legal discrimination of black people that was in force in many states before the mid-1960s.

...

With the GOP controlling both chambers of the state legislature, the Texas bill was expected to be finalized on the weekend and passed on to the desk of Governor Greg Abbott. However, a last-minute maneuver by House Democrats blocked a vote on Sunday, the last day of the legislative session.

...

The governor...rebuked the Democrats and said the bill will be back on the floor in a special session. “Election Integrity & Bail Reform were emergency items for this legislative session. They STILL must pass,” he tweeted. A brief statement along the same lines did not set a date for when the special session will be held.

The clash over SB7 escalated on the weekend after a slew of last-minute changes were proposed by a conference committee following a behind-closed-doors discussion over the past week. The changes introduced additional rules that were not part of the previous versions of the bill, which were passed by both the House and the Senate."

========

Fulton Co. Update: Audit of Absentee Ballots On Hold After County Files Motion to Dismiss

"The unsealing in Fulton County of about 147,000 absentee ballots scheduled for Friday has been postponed. The judge in the case indicated he needs to review several last-minute motions filed Wednesday night and Thursday morning by the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections to halt the audit proceedings.

After hiring top defense attorneys Donald Samuel and Amanda Palmer, Fulton County, the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections, and the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts all filed motions to dismiss, arguing the plaintiffs failed to properly serve them notice of the suit. With the high-powered Garland, Samuel, and Loeb law firm in Atlanta, the attorneys also allege the plaintiffs sued the wrong people, the defendants are protected under sovereign immunity, and the plaintiffs failed to state a claim that entitles them to court action.

The defense motions come following a ruling last week by Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero to unseal the absentee ballots in Fulton County from the 2020 presidential election. The ruling granted the petitioner access to the ballots with certain restrictions. As previously reported, Garland Favorito, a voter-integrity advocate with VoterGA, served as a Fulton County tabulation observer in the Nov. 3 election. After repeatedly being ignored following the discovery of an abnormal vote increase for Joe Biden’s vote tabulation and an apparent abnormal reduction in Donald Trump’s vote tabulation, Favorito filed the petition.

While Georgia Assistant Attorney General Charlene McGowan argued that there should be no further audit, but if there is one, it should be done by an independent group, Amero disagreed, stating, “The petitioners would be of the view that they are the ones to defend their own constitutional rights in this suit that they have filed,” adding further:

“[W]hether they have the right to conduct these independent viewings, not a physical inspection, but an inspection nonetheless, a visual inspection, combined with an opportunity to have ballot images at resolution that allows them to pursue their claims, that seems to be something they have the authority and the right to do.”

...

A new hearing in front of Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero on these motions is scheduled for June 21 at 9 a.m."

========

Federal court rules Georgia’s anti-BDS law ‘unconstitutional’ after case by journalist Abby Martin

"The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed on behalf of journalist Abby Martin – formerly the host of Breaking the Set on RT. Martin refused to sign a contract pledging that she would refrain from boycotts against Israel ahead of a planned speaking engagement at Georgia Southern University in February 2020.

When Martin refused to comply, her appearance was canceled and she later filed a lawsuit with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).

Judge Mark Cohen wrote in his ruling that Georgia’s law “prohibits inherently expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.”

...

In 2016, Gov. Nathan Deal signed SB 327 into law, which required any person or business entering into a contract with the state worth more than $1,000 to sign a pledge not to support boycotts of Israel.

...

Similar anti-BDS laws exist in numerous other US states, and CAIR has filed lawsuits against those laws in Arkansas, Arizona, Maryland, and Texas, where they saw a victory after a federal court also ruled the law was unconstitutional in 2019.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals also declared this year that Arkansas’ anti-BDS law was a violation of free speech protections."

========

117 employees sue Houston hospital network over vaccination mandate, say they don’t want to be ‘guinea pigs’

"Marc Boom, the CEO of Houston Methodist, a firm that runs eight hospitals with more than 26,000 employees, gave personnel a June 7 deadline to get vaccinated. The consequences of not getting the shot include “suspension and eventually termination,” he wrote in an April letter to doctors and nurses, which was cited in the lawsuit filed on Friday.  

A total of 117 plaintiffs are insisting that the hospital is “illegally requiring its employees to be injected with an experimental vaccine.” The hospital is forcing the staff to be “human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment,” the lawsuit says.

“It is a severe and blatant violation of the Nuremberg Code and the public policy of the state of Texas,” attorney Jared Woodfill, who filed the lawsuit in Montgomery County, told ABC News. Written shortly after WWII, the Nuremberg Code lays out the basic ethical principles of medical experimentation on humans.

A group of medical workers held a protest against the vaccination mandate outside Houston Methodist this month. “This is my body, this is my choice, and I don’t think employers, or anyone should mandate what goes into my body,” Kim Mikeska, a registered nurse, told the Houston Chronicle.

...

Marc Boom issued a statement to the media, saying that 99% of the hospital network’s employees have been vaccinated. “It is legal for health care institutions to mandate vaccines, as we have done with the flu vaccine since 2009,” the CEO said, adding that the Covid-19 vaccines were proven to be “very safe and very effective, and are not experimental.”

Boom said that more than 165 million people across the US were vaccinated, which “has resulted in the lowest numbers of infections in our country and in the Houston region in more than a year.”"

I'm sure natural immunity has played no role in the low numbers. Nor the adjusted PCR cycles.

========

Media outlets try to deflect from lab leak theory and censorship

"Mainstream media, now embarrassingly forced to follow President Biden’s policy and abruptly reverse course on the Wuhan lab leak theory – after branding and ridiculing it as a conspiracy theory for months – are working to downplay the importance of censorship around the topic that was enforced until just a few days ago.

One would think it would be hard to find a single person who has been through more than a year of lockdowns and myriads of restrictions who would not be interested to learn what the virus is and where it came from – but apparently, such people exist, in media outlets like The Verge.

An article that could easily be described as a distraction in its own right from the topic of why the lab leak theory was suppressed and censored so vigorously, now claims that the origin of coronavirus doesn’t really matter and suggests that it should be swept under the rug as a distraction from truly important topics.

While briefly paying lip service to the importance of discovering the origin of the virus, the article’s real goal is to convince its readers to change the topic. Forced to eat their own words, this class of media are no longer calling the Wuhan theory a fringe conspiracy, but “an extraordinary claim” that is “technically possible.”

But discussing the topic is discouraged as no less than “a distraction from the rest of the urgent work governments and health agencies around the world need to do in order to end this pandemic and prepare for the next one” – while at the same time calling for vaccination efforts to be doubled."

========

Over 10,000 Americans got Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated, CDC says… and actual count could be way HIGHER

"There were 10,262 cases of fully vaccinated people being infected with Covid-19 as of April 30, the CDC said on Tuesday, citing reports from 46 US states and territories. Less than 7% of the patients were hospitalized with Covid-19 symptoms, and 1.6%, or 160, died. The median age for all cases was 58, and 63% of those infected were female.

The number of breakthrough infections was equivalent to around 1 in every 10,000 fully vaccinated people, but the total was substantially undercounted. The CDC said reporting of such cases is voluntary and doesn't include vaccinated people who had no Covid-19 symptoms and weren't tested. But it also noted that 101 million Americans were fully vaccinated as of April 30, and the vast majority of those inoculated were protected from the virus.

“The number of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths that will be prevented among vaccinated persons will far exceed the number of vaccine breakthrough cases,” the CDC said.

...

...as of May 1, the agency stopped monitoring minor breakthrough Covid-19 cases and began focusing only on those leading to hospitalization or death."

Yes, we wouldn't want the accurate count, that might lead more people to see the vaccine is absolutely useless (well I guess it does seem pretty good at killing some people).

========

Okla. Gov. Kevin Stitt: Masks not required in govt. buildings

https://www.oann.com/okla-gov-kevin-stitt-masks-not-required-in-govt-buildings/

"Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has signed an executive order that states Oklahoma agencies will be barred from requiring masks or COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of being allowed to enter a state building or office.

Stitt signed the order on Friday, saying it’s time the state returned to normal. He further clarified this rule will not extend to facilities where patient care is the primary function.

Stitt refused to issue a statewide mask mandate, but in November required masks inside state buildings. This order was later lifted in March.

Stitt also signed a bill prohibiting mask mandates and vaccination requirements in state schools and colleges...."

========

US Capitol riot probe blocked as Senate Republicans use FILIBUSTER to stall action on bill creating 9/11-style commission

"All but six GOP senators voted against cloture on Friday, keeping the House bill from getting the 60 votes it needed to end floor debate and elude a filibuster. The legislation calls for creation of a 10-member commission, much like the one that studied the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to investigate the Capitol riot.

The proposed commission would enable Democrats to keep the party’s narrative of a GOP-inspired Capitol insurrection alive well into the 2022 election cycle. While such senators as Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) have joined Democrats in calling for an independent probe, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has argued that with congressional committees and the Justice Department already investigating the riot, a new commission would be redundant.

...

“If Senate Republicans can block an independent commission investigating a deadly armed attack on the Capitol because it might hurt their poll numbers with insurrectionists, then something is badly wrong with the Senate,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said after Friday’s cloture vote. “We must get rid of the filibuster to protect our democracy.”

...

President Joe Biden has shown reluctance to support eliminating the filibuster, a key feature of the American political system, but he signaled openness to changing the rules in March.

“If we have to, if there’s complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we’ll have to go beyond what I'm talking about,” the president said, after first suggesting forcing Republicans to debate until they “collapse” rather than backing down from a vote when cloture is blocked.

Speaking to a fawning press corps outside a Cleveland ice cream shop on Thursday, Biden was again pressed on the issue, saying only that, “I can't imagine anyone voting against the establishment of a commission on the greatest assault since the Civil War on the Capitol.”

The comment echoed the hyperbole that Biden used in April, when he said the Capitol riot was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Critics ridiculed that statement, noting such examples as presidential assassinations, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the September 11 attacks, the Oklahoma City courthouse bombing and 1971 and 1983 bombings of the Capitol itself."

It seems to me what happened was clear: After nearly a year of non-stop hysteria generation over a virus with a 99%+ survival rate which caused widespread economic hardship & was used to justify massive election process changes, along with years of media-generated hysteria over a "Russian puppet", a large number of people gathered to protest the results & certification process. And when the opportunity presented itself to engage in some of the same kinds of civil disobedience that had been cheered on by media & politicians alike for quite some time, they took it.

The thing is: If a large number of angry Americans would like to gain entry into the Capitol, short of gunning them down with live rounds there's not a thing you can do to stop them. Well, other than maybe not doing the type of tyrannical BS that would make them want to storm the Capitol in the first place. Every measure taken to fortify what is supposedly #WeThePeople's building where our business is conducted will only exacerbate things and make a repeat of Jan 6th all the more likely.

========

“It’s Lying to a Child”: Virginia Teacher Suspended After Opposing Pronoun Policy

"...teacher Byron “Tanner” Cross has been suspended for speaking against gender policies.

At issue was Policy 8040, which requires Loudoun staff to use preferred pronouns.

   “LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their 18 chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent educational record. School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their gender identity.”

...

The punishment of a student for failing to use the pronouns could create the most difficult constitutional challenges under the First Amendment. That could be deemed as compelled speech in contravention of their religious and political views.

Cross is an elementary school physical education teacher and appeared before the board to express the view of some parents that the policy forces people to be adopt speech that they reject on religious or political grounds.  Cross was adamant and strident in his opposition in first expressing sympathy for those with gender dysphoria but also denouncing the policy.

He makes reference to a chilling “60 Minutes” program interviewing people who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria as young children and quickly put through gender changing procedures with little time or serious review. Those interviewed describes how they were harmed by the transitioning procedures and felt that little was done to protect them.

...

...Cross was put on suspension and may be terminated.

Principal Shawn Lacey sent out an email to students stating:

   “I’m contacting you to let you know that one of our physical education teachers, Tanner Cross, is on leave beginning this morning. In his absence, his duties will be covered by substitute staff already working in our building. I wanted you to know this because it may affect your student’s school routine. Because this involves a personnel matter, I can offer no further information.”

The action raises a difficult issue for free speech. First, as a parent and teacher, Cross has every right to state his opposition to the policy.  There was not a call to fire Loudoun County teacher Andrea Weiskopf when she called for book bans and attacked those supporting classics like To Kill A Mocking Bird as advocating harmful “White Saviorism.”

However, Weiskopf did not say that she would not follow any contrary decision of the board. Cross appears to state that he will not comply with the gender policy. If Cross merely appeared at the meeting to oppose the policy, he would have an extremely strong constitutional case in opposing any suspension or termination.  Instead, he appears to pledge that he will not comply as a teacher in the county.

There may be a little wriggle room. Cross specifically declares “I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion.” It is not clear if that means that he would refuse to use a required pronoun. He could argue that he was saying that he would not expressly endorse the underlying conclusion on gender or the basis for the policy.  However, it certainly sounded like he was saying that he would not comply with Policy 8040."

========

Big Tech lobbies sue Florida over new law that seeks to punish social media firms for censorship, shadowbanning & deplatforming

"Two lobbying groups representing a who’s-who of Big Tech giants have slapped the Florida government with a lawsuit, arguing that a newly signed bill targeting social media firms for ‘censorship’ is illegal and unconstitutional.

The suit was filed in the US District Court in Tallahassee on Thursday by the two lobbying outfits, NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), who work on behalf of firms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, eBay and others. The two groups are seeking to strike down a bill signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this week, which threatens to impose fines and other penalties on major social media sites that “censor” or “deplatform” average users and political candidates.

“By constraining digital services’ ability to fight bad actors online, this law threatens to make the internet a safe space for criminals, miscreants, and foreign agents, putting Floridians at risk,” CCIA president Matt Schruers said in a press release.

...

The two lobbying groups...maintain that the bill conflicts with federal law, namely Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which insulates online platforms from legal action when scrubbing content or banning users, so long as the firms act in “good faith.” They also insist the law is unconstitutional, claiming it violates the First, Fifth and 14th Amendments, which guarantee free speech and due process protections.

“We cannot stand idly by as Florida’s lawmakers push unconstitutional bills into law that bring us closer to state-run media and a state-run internet,” said NetChoice vice-president Carl Szabo.

Perhaps anticipating objections pointing to Section 230, the bill uses similar language to that provision, specifying that any social media sites that “unfairly censor, shadow ban, deplatform, or apply post-prioritization algorithms to Florida candidates, Florida users, or Florida residents” are not acting in “good faith.”"

========

Mexican election candidate SHOT DEAD shortly after going LIVE on Facebook to ask locals to join her at rally

"Electoral candidate Alma Barragán was shot to death on Tuesday afternoon in the Mexican town of Moroleón in the central state of Guanajuato as she was taking part in a campaign event. According to local media, a group of armed men arrived at the spot where Barragán was holding a rally and opened fire. Two others have been reported injured.

...

Since the start of the electoral process in September, more than 80 politicians have been murdered, most of them gunned down. Between February and April this year, more than 50 elected officials, members of political parties and candidates were killed, which is around 40% more than before the 2018 elections, Mexican consulting firm Integralia reports.

More than 60 candidates for mayor are reported to have withdrawn from the campaign across Mexico amid the spiraling violence, which has been blamed on gang crime."

Keep this story in mind the next time you hear some US politician complaining that they feel "unsafe".

========

Professors: Israel’s backfiring vaccine passport “irreconcilable with basic principles of the medical profession”

"In an opinion piece published in The Telegraph, five professors opined that the world should learn from Israel that vaccine passports do not work.

“As professors in Israel’s medical sphere, we’ve found passes to be irreconcilable with basic principles of the medical profession,” they wrote.

...

Businesses such as bars and restaurants, and entertainment venues such as theaters were ordered not to allow people who did not have the Green Pass. In some public spaces, like the Tel-Aviv beach, there were areas designated for the “vaccinated only,” and others for the unvaccinated. The result was a country divided into two; an “upper class” of vaccinated people, and a “lower class” of unvaccinated people.

“The Green Pass was promoted with a clear message: getting the shot is the right choice. Those who refuse it are immoral, therefore, and excluding them is legitimate. The campaign to promote vaccination was often scientifically inaccurate and ethically questionable, exaggerating the danger posed by the virus to the lowest risk groups such as young, healthy students,” the professors wrote.

They added that the pass created an atmosphere of intolerance. Companies fired staff who refused to get vaccinated, universities refused to allow unvaccinated students to attend in-person lectures, unvaccinated teachers were publicly blasted, and even a renowned researcher was not allowed to attend a conference he helped arrange....

...

Interestingly, the Green Pass is also driving people, especially the youth, to refuse the vaccines.

“The coercive measures had a paradoxical effect. Traditionally, the Israeli public has a remarkably high adherence to routine vaccinations. However, the heated debate related to the Green Pass, along with public shaming, has led to resentment and anger.

The professors also pointed out the privacy violations that come with digital vaccine certification. Each time someone with the Green Pass enters a venue, it is scanned and the information recorded in a national database. A form of proof identity is also required to verify that the Green Pass belongs to the individual holding it. The process violates “both location-privacy and medical confidentiality.”

They continued to argue that vaccine passports are not supported by science, since the risk of a vaccinated person getting infected by an unvaccinated person is low, with the most likely outcome being a “very mild self-limiting disease.”

“Vaccine efficacy in preventing severe disease is always higher than its efficacy in preventing infection, since in order to become ill a person must first become infected. Therefore, if the vaccine’s protective capacity against a disease decreases significantly, for example due to a new resistant variant, vaccinated individuals will become as infectious as the unvaccinated. In other words, there is either no ground to distance unvaccinated from vaccinated, or there is ground to distance everybody, vaccinated or not.”"

========

Hoist the Black (Lives Matter) flag! US embassies to champion ‘global racial justice’ on George Floyd anniversary – leaked memo

"The memo advises embassies to focus their messaging “on the need to eliminate systemic racism and its continued impact,” and grants them “a blanket written authorization” to fly the BLM flag alongside the Stars and Stripes for the rest of the year. The diplomatic posts are advised to draw attention not just to Floyd’s death, but to other episodes from the US’ racial history – like the Tulsa race massacre and Juneteenth – all in a bid to promote “global racial justice.”

...

To be clear, this is the Biden-Harris administration speaking, not the American people, who after a summer of riots and arson are less supportive of BLM and more inclined to think that race relations in the US have worsened since last May.

Blinken’s memo will come as no surprise to anyone who watched the events of the past year with a cynical eye. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rode into office championing the BLM cause – with Harris in particular declaring in June that the group’s often-violent protests “are not going to stop after election day...and should not.” Corporate America forked out billions of dollars to the movement, and the country’s largest companies issued fawning statements in support, even as BLM rioters looted their stores.

...

...it’s hard to imagine foreigners seeing a BLM flag hoisted outside an American embassy as anything but virtue signalling on a global level. It’s twice as insulting when one reads Blinken’s memo, and sees terms cooked up in US universities to describe US-specific problems, ready to be deployed in their own countries. Given that the emergence of BLM has soured race relations in the US, the idea that transplanting its symbols and messaging halfway around the world would work is laughable at best.

Yet that hasn’t stopped the State Department from trying. Under the Trump administration, the US embassy in Moscow flew the rainbow flag and proclaimed “LGBTI rights are human rights. Human rights are universal” on Instagram, despite the Trump administration reserving flagpoles for the US flag alone. The embassy got around Trump’s guidance by hanging the multicolored banner from a window. During the Obama administration, the flying of pride flags was encouraged, a policy that Biden has resumed.

...

...By waving the BLM flag at its diplomatic outposts, the Biden administration gives itself license to lecture the world on the evils of racism, and presumably, to sanction and punish states who don’t live up to its lofty ideals. The US will be seen to be “doing the work,” to quote the most awful social-justice screechers, so the rest of the world will have to follow suit.

Whether anyone will listen is another story, and either to save themselves the embarrassment or avoid inflaming the locals, some station chiefs may avail of one key cop-out line included in Blinken’s memo: “this is an authorization, not a requirement.”"

========

Harri Hursti: Windham Ballot Fold Error Caused By Dept. of Motor Vehicles Machine

"In standard practice, according to Hursti, a ballot has the Republican candidates listed side by side on one line, and the Democratic candidates listed side by side on the other line. However, according to Hursti, someone in Windham believed that would confuse voters, so they put the candidates on different lines, which permitted a fold line to run through one candidate.

Discussing the ballot folds in Windham’s election, Hursti indicated that due to a shortage of labor and increased demand for absentee ballots due to COVID-19, Windham borrowed a folding machine from the Department of Motor Vehicles to fold ballots. Hursti claimed the machine folded the ballots incorrectly, placing the crease right through Kristi St. Laurent’s name, and they did not match up with the printer’s score marks. Adding to the issue, Hursti said that over the past six months, ballots stacked away in boxes have flattened the paper, “causing the machine count and the human count to be closer.” He said the fold bump is being misrepresented by the voting machines, creating a phantom vote, adding:

“They ran short of labor, they were behind schedule, and they tried to speed up the process by borrowing a folding machine from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Unknown to all of us before we started the audit, the fold went through St. Laurent’s name.”

...

Despite two of Windham’s four machines being in agreement and one being exceptionally off, Hursti reiterated there is no reason for concern in the rest of New Hampshire. Marilyn Todd of NH Voter Integrity Group disagrees, summarizing that out of the 243 towns in NH, 137 of them use the same Diebold ES2000 Model A voting machines as Windham. Hence, with over 200 of these machines in use across the state, Todd insists it is unreasonable to assume that Windham is the only town with a problem, as Hursti states. Additionally, Todd does not believe the discrepancies lie just in the paper folds, stating:

“If we allow them into manipulating us into thinking this is just the paper, we are not going to have a say in these machines. The paper folds are an excuse to make the rest of New Hampshire feel comfortable.”"

It's issues like this which make using computers in elections problematic. This kind of issue is not immediately obvious whereas we've had hundreds of years to sort of potential problems with hand counting paper ballots.

========

Windham Update: Hursti Alone Conducts Forensic Audit of Machines

"...Hursti remarked on Wednesday that he was unaware of when the scanners were internally cleaned or if it is done as part of maintenance. Adding that dust collected in Machine 2 was most likely the culprit of any malfunctions in the machine. He commented it was a problem easily resolved by cleaning and maintenance.

...

Many Windham residents and members of GIP have expressed serious concerns about the series of events over the last few days. They maintain, following Tom Murray and Ken Eyring’s concerted efforts to push the auditors to examine ballot folds closely, the discovery was made there was indeed a problem with ballot folds and false votes for Democrat Kristin St. Laurent. Soon after, the auditors declared the folding machine from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles was the culprit in vote miscount and immediately claimed it was an isolated incident exclusive to Windham. Nonetheless, many voters disagree, asserting the auditors jumped to that conclusion without all of the facts.

Taking the matter into their own hands to determine if this was a statewide issue, at the suggestion of GIP’s Tom Murray, election integrity advocates gathered the tabulator tapes from other towns and precincts in order to review for overvotes similar to what was discovered in Windham. They discovered that, in the neighboring town of Merrimack, overvotes on machine 3 resulted in 7% of ballots cast being thrown out. Machines 6 and 9 also had a high percentage of overvotes. In the town of Claremont, 12.5% of the votes cast on Machine 1 were overvotes and did not count. With 85 percent of New Hampshire using Diebold ES2000 Model A voting machines like Windham’s, the group considers this a huge discovery that warrants further investigation.

Finally, GIP notes that besides having the highest number of overvotes, Machine 2 in Windham also had opposite percentage conditions from the other three machines. The group discovered the same scenario in the machines with overvotes in both Merrimack and Claremont, and speculate that every Republican stronghold in the state has at least one machine that is way out of proportion with the other ones, showing the Democrats in the lead with a high number of overvotes. Again, Hursti insists the anomalies are easily explained by a quick cleaning of the scanner with compressed air.

The Election Integrity Group hopes the New Hampshire Senate will follow the Senate’s lead in Arizona by recognizing and using their power to order a kinematic scan of all the ballots in the state, which totals about 800,000 ballots."