Will Joe Biden be the next president?

[AccessBlaster]

I heard Biden's campaign manager is afraid the polls are wrong. He fears they are flipped flopped in Trump's favor. Not sure why he thinks that, but they have access to data that we don't.

 

[Jon]

I think they are saying that just so that people go out and vote.

 

[Jon]

Rudy says they will drop something significant 10 days before the election. I think that is the same day as the next debate?

 

[Pat Hartman]

There are actually two other networks - NewsMax and OAN (one American News). Both are more like real news with a conservative bent. OAN had better production values but my current cable company doesn't carry it so I haven't watched it in a couple of years. The current cable carries NewsMax though so I watch them.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I don't think that Trump is doing himself any good by relying on Giuliani. Rudy was a GREAT mayor and really cleaned up NYC. But he comes across as a sleazebag. I live close enough to visit (about an hour on an express train) and when we first moved to Stratford in 1978, NYC was dirty and not particularly safe. We went because we wanted our daughter to see the Statue of Liberty and the museums and the theater. It deteriorated during Dinkins to being a dump. It was scary walking from Grand Central to the theater district not to mention the vile smells. And finally toward the end of the 90's we started going back again on a regular basis because Giuliani cleaned it up again.

 

[Isaac]

Rudy says they will drop something significant 10 days before the election. I think that is the same day as the next debate?

Technically 10 days before would be the 24th. Debate is this Thursday. Big question, how will Trump wield the laptop-story issue. Hope he does a good job. He needs to appear composed and not "frantic", to remember he has a long time of standing there to bring it up. Really measure his words.

Interesting question in my mind, which of the following has better potential for the Dems:
- Everyone thinking Trump is losing bigtime, and therefore feeling more like jumping on the bandwagon, or
- Instilling enough worry among Democrat voters to generate max turnout

Pat - Yeah, the Rudy association isn't helping. Then again, people might think it makes sense...who would the #1 "go to" person be if someone thought, I have some really bad info on Biden and nobody's doing anything about it. Keeping in mind, this guy had already gone to his idea of the top law enforcement agency in the nation but they ended up being complicit. He probably figured, well, I tried to go to someone 'neutral' and it went nowhere.

 

[Jon]

I personally like Rudy. Perhaps he is a polarising character, like Trump.

I hear that the debate commission was going to be talking about foreign policy this Thursday, but now they have changed their mind. If so, this is just another case of bias, trying to avoid topics that put Biden in deep water. Trump will bring it up anyway.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I think they should think that Biden is winning so they stay home. The trick will be preventing the bogus ballots from coming in after election day because they have ground to make up.

Ballots are as valuable as checks and therefore should contain serial numbers. Voting districts should print only enough ballots for their registered voters. Then have a special ballot with a different numbering series and an empty spot for the number of the ballot it is replacing. All ballots should be counted as they are received even though many municipalities can't start counting until election day and ONLY those should actually get counted. There should also be internal checks to ensure that no ballot sequence number is counted more than once.

I know my town doesn't control ballots this way and so they are in jeopardy of recounting ballots from favorable precincts to up the Biden count where necessary.

Whether the ballots are handed out at the poll or sent via mail, they MUST be serialized to be secured at a minimum. That still doesn't take care of the dead people and dogs voting or the vote harvesting but at least the number of ballots counted should not exceed the number of registered voters.

Of course, that leaves open the question of what to do about anomalies. Throw out the whole precinct? Recounting doesn't help. How do you identify the duplicates when there are no serial numbers?

 

[Isaac]

My county is pretty sophisticated, at least to my minimally informed mind on the issue of voting tech. The ballots have barcodes tied to my account, so I got email/text alerts when they had 1) mailed me my ballot, 2) rec'd it, 3) verified it. This all happened about a week ago; I am on the "Permanent Early Voting List". Which is legit because it's all tied to your secure voter account of course and you're long since verified as legit before any ballot heads out your way.

It is truly amazing that a database/reporting developer sitting somewhere in a glum Government cubicle with 1960's carpet, cannot bump the "people who can vote" query up against the "social security death index file". (Maybe nobody has shown them the Find Unmatched wizard yet?) And, that this is the case in so many instances across the country.

Hey, I know - Twitter programmers seem quite AGILE, maybe they should join the election I.T. department ... Wait, that's not a funny joke.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I live inside the bubble that surrounds NYC but am at the fringes. I interact with people like Trump and Giuliani frequently at the bridge table or at work (before I retired). I think it's Giuliani's perpetual promises of secrets to be revealed that I don't like. all talk and no substance much like Lindsey Graham. Trump is much smoother but his vocabulary seems to be limited to about 8th grade and he only uses a couple of adjectives. It becomes grating to me when everyone is a great person and we get along very well. It's like listening to the grandchildren use like three times in every paragraph.

 

[Pat Hartman]

You're right Isaac. This isn't rocket science. Your county ties you to a ballot. That is secure but your vote is not private and let me tell you that you'll be really sorry about that once we get to a one-party system if the big tech wins this one. I do agree that mail in ballots should NOT be private because otherwise, you cannot control them. However, voting in person requires someone to actually show up which is a little more trouble for the ballot box stuffers and so numbering the ballots to prevent duplicates and double counting is probably enough security.

 

[AccessBlaster]

I don't think that Trump is doing himself any good by relying on Giuliani. Rudy was a GREAT mayor and really cleaned up NYC. But he comes across as a sleazebag.

Yeah, he's a bit like Biden with the bumbling confusion. The whole NYC vibe doesn't pay well across the US either.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Here's a link to Pam Bondi summarizing Hunter's connection with Barisma and Trump's ultimate request to have Ukraine look into it. I think it is from the impeachment trial in January.

 

[Jon]

Hey, I watched that video yesterday. Very compelling and great presentation.

 

[AccessBlaster]

 

[Jon]

And I watched that one yesterday too! It is all pretty damning stuff, and for the FBI too.

 

[Pat Hartman]

What happens if the media manages to squash this story until after the election? What happens if the unthinkable happens and Biden wins the election? Are we actually going to allow him to take office? I don't think any of our election laws cover how to get out of this hole. If Biden were disqualified after the election, would that make Harris the president? I don't think so. since she never took the VP seat. That leaves us back with Nancy as our president until we could have a new election. This is a recurring nightmare for me.

 

[Jon]

Hilliary destroyed evidence and was up to her neck in corruption. Nothing happened to her. Yet. The Deep State is too deep. People in high places, protecting each others backs. Tentacles that go into the CIA, FBI and DOJ.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The politician class is so corrupt, I'm not sure how to stop it. Trump gave us hope because he wasn't one of them but the game is stacked against him and since the Republicans are just as dirty as the Democrats, he has no allies anywhere. Once in a while someone steps over the line like Biden. He got too greedy and hopefully it will bite him before it is too late. Then we have people like Ilhan Omar who is just a whirlwind of corruption starting from her illegal entry to the US to her marrying her brother to circumvent our immigration laws to her funneling most of her campaign funds to her boyfriend's (may be husband now that the old one and her brother are gone) company to the latest vote buying scandal. At least the state of Minnesota is investigating her for the election interference.

I read a great book last year "Obstruction of Justice", Luke Rosiank. Some of this story made headlines in 2016 but most was squashed by the Democrat leaders in the House with the help of their Republican cohorts who were probably running a similar scam. There were two things going on, the security issue was that ~ 40 members of the House plus the DNC (Democrat National Committee) had hired the same IT consultant to run their office IT. He was a Pakistani national (Imran Awan) and his people were all family members. He was backing up all of their PCs to a server he had hidden in a closet in the House and who knows where he was selling this info. He had all their email and other secret documents. The second was a pure money-making scam and usually one member of each Representative's office was in cahoots with him. It might be the Rep or it could be an office manager or both. The scam involved purchasing hardware with House funds and selling it. House rules only required items worth over $500 to be inventoried so anything cheaper was treated like pencils and not accounted for once purchased. There is paperwork to corroborate this scam but the IG refused to prosecute Awan or his family and in fact allowed them all to leave the country after they first mortgaged their houses so they could abscond with even more money. Awan even forced suppliers to be complicit because he instructed them to use phony prices on their invoices or he would take his business elsewhere and the House was too bid a client to loose so they went along. He'd order a thousand dollar iphone that was billed at $499 and another $499 was listed on the invoice as service or training or some non physical item. So, the company would get paid the correct amount but the iphone wouldn't end up in official inventory and so it could just "disappear". This scam hit the light of day when some office manager came into the office over a weekend (no one in congress ever works on the weekend) and found Awan in his Representative's office surrounded by opened boxes of gear. Phones, TVs, laptops, you name it. He got a suspicious answer as to why Awan was in the office so he reported it to the House AG. That's when the investigation got derailed. The official position was there's nothing to see here. These are not the drones you are searching for. Just move on and they pushed this on the DC police who were even involved for a short time.

 

[moke123]

I read a great book last year "Obstruction of Justice", Luke Rosiank.

Did you read about him getting sued ?

In a rare move, prosecutors debunked the conspiracy theories surrounding him, writing in a plea agreement that they had "found no evidence [Awan] illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members' offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information" after a "thorough investigation" that included interviewing 40 witnesses and taking custody of the House Democratic Caucus server.