Greetings, and welcome to a special Election Eve Monday LinkSwarm! My Internet is back up, and tomorrow night I will be liveblogging the election returns starting around 7 PM.
For the past week or so, my back-of-the-envelope math envisioned a GOP House majority somewhere between 229 and 241, and I’m sticking to that. Give the Republicans the 212 seats in Cook Political Report, with two-thirds of the 35 races in the toss-up category, and you end up with 235 Republicans and 200 Democrats, so put those down as my final prediction numbers.
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With Bolduc, Laxalt, and Johnson winning, I come out to a 51–48 GOP advantage by the end of the week, with Walker and Warnock headed to a runoff. It wouldn’t shock me if Oz or Masters or both won, giving Republicans a 53- or 54-seat majority.
On Sunday, Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic strategist, predicted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that her party will have a bad night on Tuesday because they did not listen to voters.
“I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think we did not listen to voters in this election, and I think we are going to have a bad night,” she said.
She faulted the Democratic Party for ignoring voters’ concerns about the economy, and implored them to “stop talking about democracy being at stake.”
“When voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them,” she said. “Stop talking about democracy being at stake. Democracy is at stake because people are fighting so much about what elections mean. Voters have told us what they wanted to hear. I don’t think Democrats have delivered this cycle.”
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson gave the federal prosecutor probing Hunter Biden a little nudge Wednesday — sending him more than 200 pages of bank records showing millions in transactions between the first son’s companies and Communist Chinese-tied entities.
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The senators’ analysis of banking records, first reported by Fox News, finds that between August 2017 and October 2018, $6 million was transferred to a company allegedly set up by Hunter Biden called Hudson West III, $5 million came from Northern International Capital, a [Chinese energy compan] CEFC affiliate, and $1 million was transferred from CEFC itself.
From the pool of cash, $4.8 million was transferred from Hudson West III to other Biden companies, such as Owasco P.C. and Owasco LLC, and to a company associated with President Biden’s brother James, the Lion Hall Group.
The bank records also show that Hunter Biden and his aunt and uncle, Sara and James Biden, went on a “spending spree,” in the senators words, after Hudson West III received the millions in payments from CEFC, through a line of credit that was opened.
“We are also providing bank records showing that credit cards were collateralized by a $99,000 preauthorized withdrawal from Hudson West III,” Grassley and Johnson write, noting that the money was spent for airfare, at Apple stores, hotels, and restaurants, as they detailed back in 2020.
Grassley and Johnson also mention two $3 million wire transfers sent to Robinson Walker LLC, another Hunter Biden-associated company; and by State Energy HK Limited, another CEFC affiliate, saying the purpose of those transfers “is unclear.” The Post reported on those mysterious transactions back in 2020.
The senators also make reference to JiaQi Bao, Hunter Biden’s Chinese secretary, who reportedly pushed for “Uncle Joe” Biden to run for president and has been linked to the Chinese government. The bank transactions included in Grassley and Johnson’s letter show that Hunter Biden made payments to Bao totaling $29,795.84 after Hudson West III received the $6 million from the Chinese firms.
Some names and entities will be familiar to BattleSwarm readers, but other bits are new.
Ballot harvesting, according to the California Democrats who’d like to take it national, is an innocent practice where union members and activists, some of them illegally present in the country, do voters the favor, see, of helping voters fill out their ballots and then collecting those ballots for them so that they need never go to the polls. They call it “a new service.” It’s part of their “make every vote count” agenda, and who could be against that?
But out in Florida, where there’s still some semblance of objectivity, investigators found another story.
According to the Washington Times:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security is requesting a criminal investigation into charges of ballot harvesting in Orlando, a Democratic stronghold in the critical swing state.
Cynthia Harris, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for District 6 commissioner in Orange County, which includes Orlando, provided a sworn complaint to the election crimes office, alleging left-leaning organizations have been perpetrating a scheme to encourage residents in black neighborhoods to apply for mail-in ballots and to fill out those ballots, which she said have been collected by paid canvassers, and sometimes altered, all in violation of state law.
In an interview with The Washington Times, Ms. Harris said she has video evidence of paid ballot harvesters operating in Orlando neighborhoods in both 2014 and 2017, and that the scheme has been going on for decades, continuing through the 2020 election and the 2022 primary.
If voting fraud is this massive in Florida, how widespread and massive is it in states controlled by Democrats? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Two members of Congress from Texas and one former Trump administration official who now serves in the Texas House of Representatives are asking for answers from the Biden administration after discovering that an open borders group funded by George Soros received millions of dollars in federal grant money last year.
Alianza Americas, a nonprofit that says it is “committed to a human rights agenda for all people, with an emphasis on the inclusion and support of Latin American immigrant communities, and people on the move in Latin America,” received $7.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February 2021, according to the Washington Examiner, and then another $1 million from the Health Resources and Services administration in July.
Both organizations fall under President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services organization, and both grants were to fund COVID relief and vaccination efforts.
The group has also received nearly $1.4 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation from 2016 through 2020.
Federal law prohibits government grant money from being spent on lobbying, but Alianza Americas may have violated that prohibition in its activities as a “political advocacy group,” according to a letter from former HHS Chief of Staff Brian Harrison.
Chicago teacher’s unions want to pass an Illinois state constitutional amendment that would basically let them run the state.
If approved by Illinois voters in November, Amendment 1 will give government teachers’ unions an unfettered constitutional right to demand not just anything in their interests, but in what they see as the interests of every Illinoisan. The amendment is not limited to employee matters at the workplace.
Don’t take my word for that. Look at the first sentence of the argument in favor of it as written in the official summary as published by the Illinois Secretary of State: “This amendment will protect workers’ and others’ safety.” [Emphasis added.]
hat particular sentence is just about safety, but it shows the broad interpretation of the amendment beyond the workplace that government unions will assert. The language of the amendment itself supports that broad interpretation, and will extend to anybody’s “economic welfare,” which is pretty much everything.
What will government unions, especially radical teachers’ unions, demand with that new constitutional right?
The Chicago Teachers Union has long been quite open about its purpose. It sees itself as the vanguard of a national movement, led by unions like itself, that is textbook Marxism.
That purpose is well documented. It goes beyond the radical curriculum they teach in schools and encompasses an entire rearrangement of how America works.
Among the first things we wrote about on this site, ten years ago, was the role of the CTU and other teachers’ unions at a Marxism conference held that year:
The event was teeming with teachers who spoke about the new found bond” between Socialism and teachers’ unions according to reports, and Chicago teachers were on the stage. Chicago Teachers Union [then] VP Jesse Sharkey spoke at one breakout session. Becca Barnes, a Chicago Teachers Union teacher and organizer with Chicago Socialists, proclaimed at the beginning of the conference that “the struggle here in the United States has entered a new phase. Nowhere have we pointed the way forward more clearly than here in Chicago with the teachers union strike….”
Since then, militant radicalism has become still more firmly embedded in the CTU. That history is well documented – quite proudly by radicals themselves. The International Socialist Review, for example, lays out a good history of the CTU, saying the CTU “transcended a simple labor dispute and was transformed into a social movement, with the teachers fusing their struggle with that of the community they serve…joining in the Occupy Chicago movement that pointed out the root of societal problems—social and economic inequality.”
A poll that shows ridiculously low support from black voters for defunding the police should be the final nail in the coffin for Democrats’ anti-law and order campaign of the last seven years.
TheGrio.com commissioned a poll, along with the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that 82% of black respondents want police funding either to be kept about the same (48%) or increased (34%). Only 17% wanted it decreased.
It’s just like Kari Lake said in a recent confrontation with a reporter. If you go into most black neighborhoods and talk about defunding the police, they’ll look at you “like you’re the craziest person on the planet.” But it’s one thing for a white, conservative Republican to say it — it’s far more important to hear black respondents in a poll confirm it overwhelmingly.
Things that make you go “hmmmm“: “San Francisco DA Won’t Release Police Bodycam Video, 911 Calls From Paul Pelosi Attack.”
Great line in the middle of this Ben Shapiro election roundup video: “Andrew Cuomo came to kill all the old people and grab ass, and he ran out of old people.”
Remember all those stories of how bad it sucked for workers in Foxconn’s iPhone factory? It’s worse now.
Hundreds and perhaps thousands of workers fled a Chinese manufacturing complex that accounts for 85% of iPhone assembly capacity. The mass migration, which began this weekend, called into question that country’s COVID-control measures and, more broadly, its reliability as a part of global supply chains.
“Something snapped over the weekend,” Bloomberg News reports. Employees suddenly fled the Zhengzhou plant of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., better known as Foxconn. Videos show, in what is now called the “Foxconn Great Escape” or the “iPhone Long March,” workers scrambling over high chain fences at the plant, known as “iPhone City.”
To avoid detection, workers traveled through cropland by day. At night, they took to the roads. “Some people were walking amid wheat fields with their luggage, blankets, and quilts,” said a poster on WeChat, the popular Chinese social media platform. “I couldn’t help but feel sad.”
Residents of neighboring areas rallied, for instance leaving water and provisions in the open on roadsides. Social media postings reported signs such as “For Foxconn workers returning home.”
Truckers also pitched in. Risking criminal prosecution, they took workers in pick-up, dump, and flatbed trucks. One video shows a woman standing on the back of a big tank truck speeding down a highway in the rain.
Workers fled Foxconn’s “closed loop” system, which isolated the plant from the rest of society. Inside the loop, the company went to great lengths to stop COVID. As a disease-control measure, it had ended canteen service on October 19, forcing workers to eat boxed food in dormitory-style sleeping quarters. Food was reportedly scarce, and conditions in the dorms rapidly deteriorated. On Sunday, Foxconn announced it would resume cafeteria dining.
The political establishment—left and right—want desperately to move on, to pretend the last 30 months didn’t happen. With very few exceptions (Ron DeSantis, Kirsti Noem, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Ron Johnson, and a few others, later), they betrayed their core values. Many Republicans and so-called Libertarians quickly capitulated the primacy and importance of individual liberties. Whereas supposedly equality-loving democrats embraced policies that in no uncertain terms screwed women, children and the poor. The 2020 democrat campaign slogan might as well have been “protect the rich, infect the poor.” Or “only the rich need to learn.” They’d all very much like that you forget about that. They’d like to go back to the fights they know how to fight, the golden oldies that turn the bases out, and turn us against each other. But COVID policies turned the whole thing on its side, jumbling us all up and resulting in all sorts of hitherto unheard of alliances. And when your business is maintaining the status quo, that is very dangerous.
Which is why Emily Oster is pleading for an amnesty.
First, let’s be clear to whom Emily Oster is speaking. She’s speaking to the furious well-educated suburban women who are swinging towards Republicans in this cycle, even in the bluest of states. Because it was the bluest of states that were hit hardest by these policies. It was in blue states that the schools were closed longest, that the economic devastation was worst, that crime spiked the most, where masks were required longest. The damage done by these policies is at its beginning, not its end. Dr. Oster, would like women to believe that it was all just a mistake, a mis-understanding, and remember that it is the Republicans who are looking to limit the freedoms that really count. That while democrats had no problem sacrificing the well-being of our living children for three years in support political power, it is Republicans that pose the real threat.
Blue city blues: “Nearly 20% Of Seattle Shootings Happened Near Homeless Encampments.”
Man who used to get all his information on conservatives from the mainstream media realizes he’d been lied to.
When I left the mainstream liberal media bubble & started listening to right-wing media to understand what they want, I became more aware of the world around me than ever before. Without the filter, I got to hear what conservatives actually believe & it's not what I was told.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
For a couple of days, I was at this conservative conference, everyone I spoke with was courteous and supportive and I felt completely comfortable. I didn't have people stare at me or give me the feeling that I wasn't welcome. Actually, quite the opposite.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
However, when I would go on Twitter, they would show clips from the event and reframed this benign conservative conference as being a "KKK rally". If Americafest was a KKK rally, then it was the lamest KKK rally ever.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
Wendell Perez received a call from the elementary school that would alarm any parent. School officials told him that his 12-year-old daughter had attempted suicide in the school’s bathroom. He was told it was because she wanted to be a boy, with a male name and pronouns.
Wendell couldn’t believe it. At home, his daughter hadn’t shown any signs of gender dysphoria or discomfort in being a girl. The Perez family is Catholic, and they raised their children with a biblical and scientific understanding of biological sex.
But when Wendell and his wife Maria arrived at the school, they found out that school officials had been having confidential meetings with their daughter and discussing her discomfort with her gender. Wendell and Maria found out that teachers and staff at school had begun treating their daughter as a boy at school without their consent or knowledge. Wendell was told by staff that they didn’t share information about his daughter’s “transition” with him or his wife because of “confidentiality issues.”
Whatever happened to in loco parentis? Or does that just not apply when there are radical transexual activists to mollify?
When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.
When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.
“There was never a push towards dominance and control like it is now,” said Duncan. “You can’t voice your opinion.”
In response, many families in Grants Pass have withdrawn their children from public school, enrolling them in private school or starting to homeschool, Grants Pass teachers, school administrators and parents told The Epoch Times.
Meanwhile, in a civilized state: “Florida Bans Puberty Blockers and Transgender Surgery for Minors.”
Also, an O’Rourke rally too close to a voting location violated Texas law.
Still more Beto: “New poll shows Abbott gaining six points in eight weeks, 53/40.”
“More California companies moving headquarters out-of-state than ever before.” Texas once again tops the list of destination states, followed by Tennessee, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
“Democrat Nominee In Arkansas Arrested For Felony Terroristic Threatening. Law enforcement officials in the state of Arkansas arrested Diamond Arnold-Johnson, the Democrat nominee for Arkansas auditor, on Friday for first-degree terroristic threats.” Bonus:
Arnold-Johnson’s husband was on trial in August for allegedly posting terroristic threats on Facebook, police said. During the trial, Arnold-Johnson, 32, admitted that she, not her husband, posted the threatening messages on Facebook that led to the criminal charges, KATV reported.
A warrant was served for Arnold-Johnson’s arrest on October 13, but she refused to comply and a SWAT team was dispatched to resolve the matter.
However, police made the decision to cancel using the SWAT team to force compliance from Arnold-Johnson in an apparent attempt to not risk an explosive situation happening right before an election.
I cannot believe democracy is about to die in America, again.
After years of living under a dictatorship, America rose from the ashes. Democrats took control of the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the university system, Big Tech, the entertainment industry, and major corporations – and thereby defeated fascism by seizing every major lever of power in the nation. With one-party rule established, and all of our critics silenced, democracy was once again free to flourish.
Now, our dear democracy is under attack – by America holding a so-called “election” and allowing idiots to vote. Let us be clear about what the stakes are: if a single person I disagree with is elected in a free and fair election, democracy will be DEAD. If citizens have the power to simply vote the ruling party out of power – when I really like the current ruling party – all is lost.
People asked why Nancy Pelosi delayed passing a Wuhan coronavirus relief bill until now. One obvious reason was to avoid helping President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. Now that both houses of congress have passed this 5,593 page monster of a bill, another reason is evident: To cram as much special interest pork into it as possible.
How serious is this bill? Not very, but it spends serious money on unserious things. Tom Elliott of Grabien points out a few of the ridiculously beside-the-point items in this bill. They’re gobsmacking.
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Don’t worry. The Kennedy Center is getting yet another bailout. Why, exactly? Are they putting on shows right now? How many bailouts does it take to keep the lights on and the development department still working the phones calling on all those rich lobbyists living in the DMV?
And — thank God! — the government COVID stimulus package is there to keep teenagers from hooking up — as if there aren’t dozens if not hundreds of other programs doing the same thing. And let us take a moment to say thanks to all the HIV workers in other countries by giving them new cars. Funding for this is in the COVID bill. You? Buy used.
Also included is $453 million to Ukraine, on top of the $400 million Trump eventually released. No word on how much of that goes to the ‘big guy.’
$10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan.
$1.3 billion to Egypt, and $700 million to Sudan.
$135 million to Burma, $85.5 million to Cambodia, $1.4 billion for an “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act,” and $130 million to Nepal.
If we have to pay money to Sudan for it’s peace deal with Israel, then the price is too high.
There’s so much pork in the bill that President Trump has threatened to veto it:
He notes that the bill provides stimulus checks for the families of illegal aliens, “far more than the Americans are getting.”
Alas, President Trump is a late convert to fiscal sanity. The budget deficit was just shy of $1 trillion in FY2019, before coronavirus shutdowns wrecked the economy. Alas, since the Senate passed the bill 92-6 (Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Rick Scott were the only senators to vote against it), a veto override seems likely.
All of the media chatter about this has been referring to it as a COVID relief bill. Yes, we’re all aware that this is how these spending bills get done. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? This little pork dance just gets worse with each new spending bill. Ninety-nine percent of the people who get elected to the House or Senate immediately become afflicted with brain damage that renders them incapable of understanding the meaning of “fiscal responsibility.”
Hunter Biden revelations continue to explode, Kazakhstan joins China and Ukraine in the Biden Payola Sweepstakes, inside Biden’s Malarkey Factory, and the revolving door between social media giants and Team Biden. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!
Just two more BidenWatchs until election day!
If you haven’t been following last week’s Hunter Biden revelations, click here and here.
Hunter Biden is facing fresh questions over business dealing in yet another nation — Kazakhstan.
Between 2012 and 2014 — when his father Joe Biden served as Vice President — Hunter Biden worked as a go-between to Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakh oligarch with close ties to the country’s longtime kleptocratic leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, The Daily Mail reported.
The British tabloid said they obtained emails from “anti-corruption campaigners” in Kazakhstan showing Hunter making contact with Rakishev and attempting to facilitate investment for his cash in New York, Washington DC and a Nevada mining company.
Through his connections, emails show Hunter Biden successfully engineered a $1 million investment from Rakishev to filmmaker Alexandra Forbes Kerry — the daughter of ex-Sen. and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, the report said.
Hunter Biden also traveled to the country’s capital of Astana for business talks.
Rakishev, however, repeatedly ran into problems finding western business partners due to the murky origins of his wealth. The respected International Finance Corp. pulled out a planned deal with him over “liabilities” stemming from his connections to the country’s rulers.
As in other nations like Ukraine and China where Hunter plied his trade, Joe Biden may not have been far behind. The Mail published a photo they obtained from the “Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery” showing Hunter Biden with his beaming father alongside Rakishev.
Has another Hunter Biden laptop been seized in Ukraine? “A Ukrainian lawmaker has claimed a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden’s business contacts in the country has been seized by law enforcement there. Andrii Derkach posted to Facebook on Friday to say there is a ‘second laptop’ involving evidence of corruption and connected to the Bidens.” As with all foreign sources, some caution is probably in order.
“Has the FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop material for ten months?”
A whistleblower says that many months ago, he provided the FBI contents of a laptop computer once used by Hunter Biden.
That’s according to a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray sent today by Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.). The letter states that an unnamed whistleblower contacted Sen. Johnson’s committee on September 24, a day after the committee released its investigation into alleged Biden conflicts of interest.
The whistleblower reported he had turned over the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop December 9, 2019 in response to a grand jury subpoena issued by the FBI from the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Delaware is the Bidens’ home state.
In the letter today, Sen. Johnson says that he and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the FBI about facts alleged by the whistleblower but the FBI stonewalled. That despite the fact that Johnson says several of their questions were not related to confidential information regarding “the possible existence of an ongoing grand jury investigation.”
More from Rudy Giuliani on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Including the fact that Biden’s lawyer tried to get the laptop back after the story broke. Plus: “It’s got him [Hunter Biden] there with crack pipes, it’s got him there doing an imitation of Anthony Weiner about 50 times.” Also:
He went on to say that there would be more communications that would describe how Joe Biden was being compensated.
“In fact, he was getting a large portion of this money,” Giuliani said, adding that the information would explain how Joe Biden, who has never made that much money as a politician, “has two or three luxurious homes.”
“Because he didn’t pay for anything, Hunter did,” he explained.
“This is a long term bribery scheme that started low level in Delaware with his brother James—selling his office,” Giuliani told Crowder.
“When they got to the big time, they shook down Iraq for … I think about 500 million, Ukraine for about 20 [million], China—I don’t know—30, 40 million?” he said.
Giuliani added that he almost forgot Russia. “The 3.5 million from the mayor’s wife,” who he noted is a good friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “That woman is a close ally of Putin,” Giuliani said, pointing out the irony of the president being accused of colluding with Russia, when “Biden actually got paid by Russia!”
Here’s a New York Times piece that attempts to debunk the Hunter Biden story by taking every Team Biden pronouncement at face value, but which nonetheless provides an awful lot of damning context for his China dealings:
The $1.5 billion figure to which Mr. Trump referred on Thursday appears to be the amount of money that a Shanghai-based private-equity company, BHR Equity Investment Fund Management Co., aimed to raise in 2014. The company, which says its biggest shareholder is the state-controlled Bank of China, pools money and invests in companies, many of which are also state owned.
Hunter Biden has been a member of the board of BHR since it was formed in late 2013. In October 2017, after his father had left the vice presidency, he bought 10 percent of the firm, investing the equivalent of $420,000.
But his lawyer, George Mesires, said on Thursday that he has never been paid for his role on the board, and has not profited financially since he began as a part-owner.
“He has not been compensated for being on the board of directors, nor has he received any return on his investment to date,” Mr. Mesires said. Although BHR has been involved in a number of business deals, he said, “there have been no distributions to the shareholders since Hunter has been an equity owner.”
Translation: “Sure, he’s part owner of a company with several Communist Chinese officials, but you have top trust us when we say he hasn’t made any money off the deal!”
With his latest attacks on the Bidens, Mr. Trump is “desperately clutching for conspiracy theories that have been debunked and dismissed by independent, credible news organizations,” Kate Bedingfield, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement.
Still, the fact that Chinese state-owned firms were interested in linking arms with Hunter Biden while his father was vice president fits a long pattern of companies owned by or closely tied to foreign governments courting the families of high-ranking American officials. In 2002, for example, when George W. Bush was president, his brother Neil won a $400,000 consulting contract to advise a Chinese semiconductor company co-founded by the son of the man who was then China’s president.
“Almost any senior name that I start researching, I run into practices like this. It is extraordinarily widespread,” Sarah Chayes, the author of the book “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security,” said in an interview on National Public Radio on Thursday. “How did we all convince ourselves that this isn’t corrupt?”
Asked if there was any conflict of interest, Mr. Mesires, said: “Hunter has been repeatedly clear on this point. Hunter has not and does not discuss his business interests with his father.”
A spokesman for the Biden campaign also said that the former vice president never discussed the China venture with his son.
The only known connection between the elder Mr. Biden and BHR came in early December 2013 in Beijing. Mr. Biden, who had traveled to China on official business as vice president, met and shook hands with his son’s business associate, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the hotel where the American delegation was staying, according to an account in The New Yorker. The magazine said Hunter Biden had arranged the encounter with Mr. Li, who was headed for a post as BHR’s chief executive.
Hunter Biden went along to Beijing, too, because his young daughter had been invited and needed to be chaperoned, according to Mr. Mesires. He said that his client and Mr. Li met for coffee on the trip but that it was only a social chat. “He conducted no business there,” the lawyer said.
Several days after the trip, BHR won a business license from the Chinese government. Mr. Mesires said that the registration paperwork had already been submitted and that the timing of the approval was purely coincidental. Hunter Biden was not involved in the firm’s registration, and its approval “was not related in any way, shape or form to Hunter’s visit,” he said.
To raise funds, BHR teamed up with some of China’s leading state-owned financial companies, including its biggest indirect shareholder, Bank of China, as well as China Development Bank and the country’s social security fund, according BHR’s website. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 that the firm was seeking to raise $1.5 billion.
That figure was then cited by Peter Schweizer, a conservative author, in a 2018 book detailing the China business ties of some prominent American political families. Mr. Schweizer was also the author of the 2015 book “Clinton Cash.”
Until October 2017, well after his father had stepped down from the vice presidency, Hunter Biden had no equity stake in BHR, Mr. Mesires said. He said Mr. Biden bought a stake in the firm in the name of a company named Skaneateles L.L.C. for the equivalent of about $420,000. That gave him about 10 percent of the company’s registered capital of 30 million renminbi, China’s currency. Skaneateles is the New York hometown of Hunter Biden’s mother, who died in 1972.
BHR has invested in a number of state-owned Chinese companies, including a subsidiary of the oil refiner Sinopec and China General Nuclear Power Group. The business focus of some of them is at odds with American policy.
For example, the company invested in Face++, a division of the Chinese company Megvii, which specializes in facial recognition technology that is promoted for use by China’s police, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. BHR also invested alongside AVIC, a major state-owned aerospace and defense company that builds fighter jets for the Chinese military.
“Nothing to see here, folks! But that Ukrainian phonecall was an impeachable offense!”
“In 2015, Hunter Biden’s Bohai Harvest joined forces with Chinese military contractor AVIC to buy American parts manufacturer Henniges,” Schweizer explains in the documentary. Henniges produces dual-use technology, which can be used for commercial and military purposes. The deal required Obama administration approval, and the Obama administration did approve it.
AVIC, a company notorious for stealing U.S. military technology, bought 51 percent of Henniges while Bohai Harvest bought the other 49 percent.
2. Military surveillance tech used on the Uyghurs
“Hunter’s firm, Bohai Harvest, also invested in military surveillance technology that the Chinese government would use to monitor and control the population in their own country,” Schweizer says.
The company, FACE++, developed technology the Chinese Communist Party used to identify potential terrorists, which helped result in the detention of over 1 million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Interestingly, nothing comes up when using “Hunter Biden cocaine ass” as the Twitter image search terms, but do come up if you remove “ass.” So: The usual twitter incompetence extends to their censorship as well…
Testy:
I asked Joe Biden: What is your response to the NYPost story about your son, sir?
He called it a “smear campaign” and then went after me. “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.” pic.twitter.com/Eo6VD4TqxD
More of that all-in-the-family Biden corruption: “Biden’s son-in-law advises campaign on pandemic while investing in Covid-19 startups.” That’s Howard Krein for those of you playing along on the home game…
It’s no secret the totalitarian governments of China and Iran favor Joe Biden in the presidential election.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would like nothing more than to go back to the status quo ante, the pre-Trump world when American politicians convinced themselves (or pretended to) China would turn democratic if we gave them favorable trade terms and shut up about their monstrous repressive policies, including the hundreds of thousands—or is it millions—languishing in “reeducation” camps while the rest of their population becomes subject to the pervasive Orwellian surveillance of the “social credit“ system.
Then there’s the little matter of the as yet still mysterious provenance of the novel coronavirus, appropriately called the CCP virus hereabouts, that has wreaked such havoc across the globe. When we will know the truth about what really happened in the Wuhan virology lab? Would a Biden administration even want to know?
And, yes, as most of us realize, there’s considerably more, but it was all okay in the view of Democrats like Biden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein—she of the Chinese chauffeur who, mirabile dictu, was suddenly exposed as a spy after twenty years of service to her—as long as there was money to be made.
And there was, a lot, as Hunter Biden, not to mention Feinstein’s husband and Michael Bloomberg, can attest.
Hunter’s father had to revise his initial praise of China, pooh-poohing the idea they might be an enemy, when things started to get a little obvious and handlers whispered in his ear this was not exactly the road to the White House.
So it’s hard to feel reassured about how Joe would behave toward the communist regime once in office. There’s a great deal more reason, actual evidence of deals, to believe the Chinese have “special leverage” with Biden than there ever was that the Russians had something on Trump.
And politicians like Biden and Feinstein are far from alone in their fealty to Beijing. They have plenty of support among American progressives. As is well known, many of our universities, from Harvard on down, have been bribed with huge sums by the CCP to regard them favorably, even have had spies on the faculty, with Confucius Institutes, essentially communist propaganda arms, installed on many campuses.
Would a President Biden fight this network of corruption that actually justifies and teaches totalitarianism to our youth? Does he even think or know about it?
We know Trump would because he already has. He does it.
You know that whole “Biden Landslide” narrative the media is trying to sell? You shouldn’t be buying.
Early voting data in battleground states shows Trump outpacing national polls giving Biden an edge
The Republican Party is keeping pace in mail-in and early voting in three key swing states despite polls showing early voting should clearly favor Joe Biden.
Data out of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio indicates that registered Republicans are returning ballots at about the same rate as registered Democrats in the battleground states.
In Michigan as of Wednesday, just over 1 million ballots have been returned, 40% from registered Democrats, with the same from registered Republicans. In Wisconsin, 40% of the 711,855 returned ballots have been from Democrats, while 38% have come from Republicans. The GOP actually leads in Ohio, with 45% of 475,259 early ballot returns coming from Republicans, compared to 43% from registered Democrats. The preliminary data matches up with the requests by party affiliation for mail-in ballots.
The data contradicts national polls showing Biden supporters overwhelmingly plan to vote by mail or early in person. According to a Pew Research poll released Friday, 55% of voters who plan to cast their ballot in person before Election Day support Biden, compared to 40% who support President Trump.
For a few weeks now, there has been a massive divide between what the polls say and what you can see happening on the ground. Every poll shows Biden leading, yet public support for Trump remains huge and enthusiastic.
One other thing that’s not showing up in the polls and that’s favoring Trump is voter registration.
Note that this is net new fraud, on top of whatever was done in 2016. And this is the best case scenario – there’s no margin of error at all for Team Biden here, and so it really needs to be 500,000.
Plus that many again to keep Trump from flipping Blue states.
To talk about a Biden-Harris administration let’s first talk about the Obama-Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch administration.
Back in 2015 and 2016, when Holder and Lynch were President Obama’s Attorney Generals, my frack company was beset with an IRS audit, an International Fuel Tax (“IFTA”) audit and a Department of Labor investigation. Not to be excluded, I was also personally audited by the IRS. Fortunately, me and my company cleared the IRS audits without penalty (other than paying our accountant). The Department of Labor audit got us for something less than $250, based on some arcane back of the book calculation on arbitrarily given bonuses. But the IFTA audit did some damage with a $40,000 paperwork related fine even though all our taxes were paid at the pump. All three agencies and all four audits were federal, and all came at roughly the same time. When I asked the Department of Labor attorney how she even found our little basement office, she kept mum.
There was no point in her answering – we both knew why she was there.
Her 18,000-employee strong department, like the IRS and IFTA, had been weaponized to undermine the oil and gas industry. AGs Holder and Lynch, likely with President Obama’s blessing, were picking and choosing and me and my industry got picked.
Snip.
Now, we have Vice President Biden saying he supports fracking when he swings through natural gas rich Pennsylvania, but we all know that is just politicking. His previous anti-fracking statements, all of them inconveniently caught on imperishable video tape, suggest some double speak here.
So where does Joe Biden truthfully stand on fracking?
That depends on who he’s talking to. In the old days they called it “waffling” and it was a disqualifier. Not so any longer. If there is any sort of pushback, the 2020 method is to simply just deny that you have multiple positions on the same subject. When no one pushes back, why not?
They call Joe a fair-minded moderate, a congenial and thoughtful friend to both sides of an argument. I’m sorry, I just don’t see it. A moderate doesn’t choose a San Francisco prosecutor with an anti-fossil fuel record as a running mate. A moderate also wouldn’t choose socialist New York Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to co-chair his climate task force.
During the recent Harris-Pence debate, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez Tweeted “Fracking is bad, actually”. So, I guess we at least know where she stands, a breath of fresh air given the chicanery of the Biden-Harris oil and gas platform. Now rumors of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as a Biden administration Attorney General are being reported. True or not, it knocks the wind out of the rest of that moderate argument. Remember, Governor Cuomo was the guy who ordered his own state regulators to study the health and safety of fracking. When their study qualified fracking as environmentally safe, Mr. Cuomo outlawed it anyways. So much for open minded moderation, Mr. Biden. These aren’t “across the aisle” sorts of people that Biden’s handlers would want you to believe are open minded to US Energy Policy. Moderates simply don’t choose vehemently anti oil and gas lightning rods as successors, advisors and top cops.
In a recent Rasmussen Reports poll, 59% of respondents didn’t think Joe Biden would serve-out a full four-year term due to health-related issues. That would leave us with Senator Harris as president. And where exactly would that leave us? I would argue, uncertain at best. When President Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the oil and gas industry immediately turned on after a punishing two-year downturn. Oil and gas prices didn’t rise as a result of his victory, but business confidence did. Operators teed up new drills and completions and service companies like mine were immediately called back to work. We finally had an administration that was supportive of extraction rather than vaguely duplicitous about it. Four years later, having a new Commander and Chief who is well known as anti-fracking isn’t going to do much for industry confidence. Investment will dwindle, jobs will be lost and the environment will suffer. Natural gas power plants are the reason for the considerable drop in CO2 emissions in US air over the last decade. Fueling these plants is the gas from fractured horizontal shale. Stop fracking and natural gas stops flowing—right away.
Should a Biden presidency prevail in the upcoming elections, my own experience tells me that our oil and gas industry will be facing regulatory headwinds that will far exceed the blow back I personally faced during President Obama’s time in office.
First, Biden did not merely “support” the 1994 law; he wrote the damned thing, which he has proudly called “the 1994 Biden Crime Bill.” Second, as much as Biden might like to disavow the law’s penalty enhancements now that public opinion on criminal justice has shifted, he was proud of them at the time. Third, the 1994 crime bill is just one piece of legislation in Biden’s long history of supporting mindlessly punitive responses to drugs and crime.
Biden is trying to gloss over a major theme of his political career. “Every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress—every minor crime bill—has had the name of the Democratic senator from Delaware, Joe Biden,” he bragged in 1993. Now he wants us to believe his agenda was limited to domestic violence, community policing, and gun control.
“Things have changed drastically” since 1994, Biden said last night, noting that “the Black Caucus voted” for the crime bill, and “every black mayor supported it.” In other words, now that black politicians and Democrats generally have rejected the idea that criminal penalties can never be too severe, Biden has shifted with the winds of opinion. But as Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) noted during a Democratic presidential debate last year, that does not mean we should forget Biden’s leading role in the disastrous war on drugs and the draconian criminal justice policies that put more and more people in cages for longer and longer periods of time.
“The crime bill itself did not have mandatory sentences except for two things,” Biden said. He mentioned the law’s “three strikes and you’re out” provision, which required a life sentence for anyone convicted of a violent crime after committing two other felonies, one of which can be a drug offense. He said he “voted against” that provision, which is not exactly true. While he did express concern that the provision was not focused narrowly enough on serious violent crimes, he voted for it as part of the broader bill.
In any case, Biden did not just go along with the crime bill’s punitive provisions; he crowed about them. Like a crass car salesman hawking a new model with more of everything, he touted “70 additional enhancements of penalties” and “60 new death penalties—brand new—60.” He denounced as “poppycock” the notion, which would later be defensively deployed by Bill Clinton and Biden himself, that “somehow the Republicans tried to make the crime bill tougher.” Biden bragged that he had conferred with “the cops” instead of some namby-pamby “liberal confab” while writing the bill.
As for “what the states did locally,” the law was designed to increase incarceration. It provided $10 billion in subsidies for state prison construction, contingent on passage of “truth in sentencing” laws that limited or abolished parole. “What I was against was giving states more money for prison systems,” Biden said last night. But that is simply not true. As FactCheck.org noted last year, “Biden did support $6 billion in funding for state prison construction, but not the $10 billion that was part of the final bill.”
For all that people bitch about, that crime bill, incarcerating repeat offenders, and the “broken window policing” embracing by many big cities did help bring crime rates down. But the drug war incarcerated millions of users without putting a dent in the drug trade.
Trump first lamented the horrific treatment of George Floyd, calling it “a terrible thing to watch.” He noted Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) proposal, the JUSTICE Act. “He came up with a bill that should have been approved. It was great,” the president noted. “And the Democrats just wouldn’t go for it.”
Indeed, Senate Democrats pre-emptively blasted the bill before Republicans had finished drafting it. Minutes after Scott, a black Republican senator, revealed the bill, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called it a “token” effort. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went so far as accusing Republicans of “trying to get away with murder, the murder of George Floyd,” because the JUSTICE Act’s provisions against chokeholds did not go far enough, in her view.
Trump went on to repeat his rather grandiose claim, “I have done more for the African American community than any president. With the exception of Abraham Lincoln.”
Yet the president mentioned specific accomplishments. “Criminal justice reform, prison reform, historically Black colleges and universities — I got them funded. They were on a year-to-year basis. … I got them 10-year funding and financing, and more than they even asked for,” Trump explained.
The president also mentioned opportunity zones, his program to help black entrepreneurs. He claimed that President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Biden “never even tried” to do criminal justice reform. While Obama did suggest reform measures, he did not get them passed through Congress and signed into law, as Trump did.
Joe Biden’s campaign has quietly built a multimillion-dollar operation over the past two months that’s largely designed to combat misinformation online, aiming to rebut President Trump while bracing for any information warfare that could take place in the aftermath of the election.
The effort, internally called the “Malarkey Factory,” consists of dozens of people around the country monitoring what information is gaining traction digitally, whether it’s resonating with swing voters and, if so, how to fight back. The three most salient attacks the Malarkey Factory has confronted so far are claims that Biden is a socialist, that he is “creepy” and that he is “sleepy” or senile.
In preparation for misinformation spreading as voters head to the polls, especially a stretch around Election Day when Facebook will not let campaigns buy new ads, the campaign has partnered with dozens of Facebook pages associated with liberal individuals or groups that have large followings. The campaign has also enlisted 5,000 surrogates with big social media platforms who can pump out campaign messages.
The Malarkey Factory has already been at work. When Trump began attacking Biden as a socialist, for example, the Biden campaign saw that it was affecting Hispanic voters in Florida. So it developed counter-messaging that showed a different image of Biden, with him speaking of his love for America and being endorsed by former president Barack Obama, and the campaign blasted the messaging to Latinos in the state.
Hunter’s name appears once, China and Ukraine not at all. One wonders if Post writer Matt Viser is himself an employee, given how fervently the piece regurgitates Biden campaign talking points…
Here are some of the other areas of concern, especially when we consider the role she plays at Facebook should be filled by someone who is politically unbiased:
Senior Policy Advisor to Ambassador Samantha Power
Director for Russia at the National Security Council
Chief of Staff for the Office of European and NATO Policy
Professor at Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University
Field organizer for Obama for America in Wisconsin
Worked for the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Distinguished Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship recipient
Caveat: I’m not familiar with noqreport.com, but there seems to be some supporting information out there.
More social media honchos walking through the revolving door to team Biden: Twitter public policy director Carlos Monje is joining Biden’s “transition team.” 1. Why does Twitter even have a “public policy director? (Don’t answer that: Obviously to help Democrats.) 2. Seems like he’s counting his chickens before they’re hatched, doesn’t it?
Most households would face a tax increase under the Biden-Harris tax plan. In fact, as the chart shows, unless your household income is less than $45,600, there is more than a 90 percent chance that the Biden-Harris plan, if enacted, will raise your taxes. In the exact middle of the household income distribution, over 95 percent of households can expect a tax increase if the Biden-Harris plan becomes law. Overall, 82.6 percent of American households can expect a tax increase.
But you won’t just be taking home less money thanks to taxes, you’ll be taking home less money period. “A new study on Biden’s tax, health-care, energy and regulation proposals predicts $6,500 less in median household income by 2030.”
Evidently Joe Biden has seen his own shadow and will not be showing his face until Thursday:
CBS's Ed O'Keefe on Face The Nation: "[Joe Biden] will not be seen again after today until Thursday night."
REMINDER: Joe Biden and his campaign have not disputed the authenticity of the bombshell emails which detail the extensive corruption of the Biden family. pic.twitter.com/obMn3QRxKS
I think this very short flowchart is worth highlighting:
I'm amazed that the Media is so focused on Ukraine. There's plenty of story in China, but that one impacts both Joe Biden and John Kerry. Probably 100% legal, but let's not pretend that it's not happening. pic.twitter.com/cYJAU4PJtg
Supposedly Kamala Harris has tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus, and so won’t be traveling anymore. Which is a lot more palatable to the press than saying she’s come down with the Dontwannatalkaboutmyrunningmatesobviouscorruptionproblemsvirus.
Time, finally, for something vaguely resembling a comprehensive post-election roundup.
As this keeps threatening to turn into a very long and unwieldy post, I’m going to break it up into chunks, with this installment centered on vote totals, race outcomes, and statistical facts about the election. We’ll save analysis, implications, and the saltiest examples of liberal tears for another time.
Assuming the current results hold, Trump flipped six states Romney lost (Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan), plus Maine’s second congressional district, which gives Trump 306 electoral votes.
That’s the highest electoral vote totals for a Republican since Bush41 blew out Dukakis in 1988 (426).
Hillary might still edge Trump in the popular vote (right now she’s up by 3/10ths of 1%).
Clinton lost over 5 million votes from Obama’s 2012 totals. Trump was down less than a million from Romney’s totals.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson pulled in over 4 million votes, triple his 2012 showing. Green Party candidate Jill Stein pulled in over 1.2 million votes, which was almost triple her 2012 showing as well.
Evan McMullin (or, as Ace of Spades refers to him, “Egg McMuffin”) pulled in less than half a million votes, about a third of which came from his native Utah, where he beat Johnson and Stein. He did not win any counties in Utah, though he did beat Clinton in a few.
1996 was the last time West Virginia (formerly a reliable Democratic state) went for the Democratic presidential candidate. This year they went for Trump by nearly 69%, including every county in the state. Despite that, WV Democratic Senator Joe Manchin says he’s not switching to the Republican Party. Machin, 69, is up for reelection in 2018.
Republicans lost two seats (in Illinois and New Hampshire) but maintain control of the Senate. Louisiana will have it’s top two runoff December 9, where Republican John Kennedy will be heavily favored, likely giving Republicans a 53-47 edge.
Republicans only lost six House seats, easily maintaining control. Three Dem pickups were in Florida (where Republicans flipped two sets themselves), two in Nevada, one in New Hampshire, one in Virginia, and one in New Jersey. Republicans also picked up one House seat in Nebraska. Republicans are guaranteed to retain control of Louisiana’s third congressional district (two Republicans in the runoff) and likely to retain control of the 4th as well.
Not a single U.S. House seat in Texas flipped parties, which means that incumbent Republican Will Hurd retained the 23rd Congressional District over Democrat Pete Gallego. CD23 is the only true swing U.S. House district in Texas these days, and Gallego had been the incumbent when Hurd ousted him in 2014.
Senator Tim Scott was reelected to a full term. Scott still remains the first black Senator from the South since reconstruction.
Republicans also picked up three governorships, in Missouri, Vermont and New Hampshire, giving them 33 to the Democrats 15.
The North Carolina Governor’s race may not be decided until November 18. If Democrat Roy Cooper’s razor thin lead over Republican incumbent Pat McCrory holds, that will be the Democrats’ only gubernatorial pickup this year.
“Eastern Kentucky voters rejected [Democrat] House Speaker Greg Stumbo on Tuesday as Republicans appeared poised to take control of the Kentucky House of Representatives for the first time since 1921.”
Texas county-by-county Presidential race results. Clinton taking Fort Bend county is a surprise to me; Romney won that by six points in 2012, and Clinton beat Trump by about that much this year.
Libertarians maintained automatic ballot access in Texas because their railroad commission candidate pulled in 5.3% of the vote, over the 5% threshold. The Green Party, however, did not, and will have to submit 50,000 petition signatures to make the ballot in 2018.
National Review (ad blocker blocker warning) notes that the “Trump won because of racism” talking point is demonstrably wrong:
Mitt Romney won a greater percentage of the white vote than Donald Trump. Mitt took 59 percent while Trump won 58 percent. Would you believe that Trump improved the GOP’s position with black and Hispanic voters? Obama won 93 percent of the black vote. Hillary won 88 percent. Obama won 71 percent of the Latino vote. Hillary won 65 percent. Critically, millions of minority voters apparently stayed home. Trump’s total vote is likely to land somewhere between John McCain’s and Romney’s (and well short of George W. Bush’s 2004 total), while the Democrats have lost almost 10 million voters since 2008.
And all this happened even as Democrats doubled-down on their own identity politics.
But all this is based on exit polls. How do we know they’re any more accurate at capturing the electorate than those other faulty polls?
More exit poll analysis from Oren Cass. The thrust is that Trump did better among nonwhites than Romney. But when he gets down to differences of less than 2%, he’s counting angels on the heads of pins.
Remember all that MSM talk about Trump turning Texas into a swing state? Instead he turned Michigan and Wisconsin into swing states.
Here’s a Tweet that encapsulates a New York Times interactive map indicating which areas of the country voted notably more Republican or more Democratic in the Presidential race than in 2012. Note the strong surge of Trump voters in the rust belt.
I know it’s more of a “dog bites man” story by now, but given Obama’s ever-louder declarations that “debate is over,” here’s the most recent reminder that ObamaCare still has all the popularity of an album of Yoko Ono/Gilbert Godfried duets:
One indication of how unpopular ObamCare remains is how little Democrats want to talk about it. “If the law was really working, and voters were excited about it, Democratic candidates would be talking about it all the time, rather than trying to change the subject.”
Did you get health insurance through ObamaCare in Concord, New Hampshire? Sucks to be you. “Only a single insurer in the state offers policies through the new law. Ten of the state’s 26 hospitals and one fifth of its primary care providers aren’t in its network. Residents of Concord, the state capital, have to drive to other cities to get covered hospital care.”
