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2016 Election Tag

Texas has given President-elect Donald Trump 36 electoral votes, pushing him to 304 electoral votes. He needed 270 to secure the presidency. Today is the day! The Electoral College across the nation will meet and cast its vote for the next president of the United States of America. President-elect Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes on election day, only needing 270 to win the election against Hillary Clinton. Remember, though, that Congress will officially count the votes on January 6. I have updated the post below the jump. Keep checking back!

As DNC chair Donna Brazile contradicts Obama on Russian hacking and John McCain asserts that Obama has no idea what to do about the serious problem of Russian hacking that could "undermine our democracy," Henry Kissinger offers some much-needed perspective. ABC News reports on Brazile undercutting Obama's public statements:
Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said Russian hackers persisted in trying to break into the organization's computers "daily, hourly" until after the election -- contradicting President Obama's assertion that the hacking stopped in September after he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to "cut it out."

The folks at MRCTV have created a splendid piece of satire aimed squarely at the "safe space" crowd currently occupying American college campuses. From their website:
MRC Launches ‘Save the Snowflakes’ Campaign Given the devastating emotional and psychological consequences of Donald Trump’s election victory on sensitive, liberal college students – a.k.a., snowflakes – the Media Research Center has launched a special project, “Save The Snowflakes.”

We live in very dangerous times, with Democrats trying to flip the Electoral College against Trump through cajoling, and when that fails, threats and intimidation. It still seems unlikely that Democrats will pull it off by Monday, December 19, 2016, when the Electoral College votes. I shudder to think what will happen if Democrats manage to steal the election this way, just as I would have shuddered to think what would have happened in 2008 had Republicans succeeded in stealing the election from Obama using similar tactics. This Coup de Electoral College attempt is premised mostly on assertions that Russia "hacked the election," and that there is new information after the election that could not have been considered by voters. In that theory, the Electoral College must act to protect the nation.

Having lost his bid for reelection, North Carolina's governor Republican Pat McCrory has signed into law a bill that will, among other things, limit his Democrat successor's power to appoint Democrats to the State Board of Elections and that will require the political party of judges to be printed on election ballots. Fox News reports:
On his way out the statehouse door, North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law the first of what could be several bills that would strip the executive powers of his Democratic successor, Roy Cooper. Critics say it’s an extraordinary move that flies in the face of voters.

There's been plenty of talk about "fake news" since the election. In fact, some people in politics and media have even suggested that fake news contributed to Hillary Clinton's stunning loss. But what about the supposedly legitimate media. Aren't they to blame as well? In his newest Firewall video, Bill Whittle puts it all in perspective. Here's a partial transcript via Truth Revolt:
Bill Whittle's Firewall: Fake News If there is one thing you can ABSOLUTELY count on in modern American politics, it is this: every time a Progressive Democrat invokes the Founding Fathers and American Freedom, that will be immediately followed by a proposal that reduces American Freedom and is an insult to the Founding Fathers.

The House and Senate have become agitated with the CIA as the agency has continued to deny both sectors with briefings or information on claims that Russia hacked into America's election, but passed information to the mainstream media. Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) told a radio station in his home state that the CIA just denied his request for a briefing:
“I’m not happy they denied a briefing to me,” the Wisconsin Republican told a public radio interviewer in his home state on Friday morning. “I need information from the administration, and right now they're withholding it.”

Professor Jacobson has covered the Democrat's futile attempt to mount an electoral college insurrection in the hopes of turning over the results of the recent presidential election. Monday morning, establishment media outlets along with a bevy of Democrats decided Russia was to blame for Hillary's embarrassing electoral loss. The sudden, unified chorus was an amusing sight to behold. I blogged:
The Russian hacking/tainted election story line is a particularly fascinating coping mechanism in leftist elite circles.

Republican elector Chris Suprun caused a ruckus when he announced he would not vote for President-elect Donald Trump even though Trump won the state in the November election. But is it all a publicity stunt? WFAA investigated Suprun's past and found numerous inconsistencies such as lying about working as a 9/11 first responder at the Pentagon:
"He claimed to be a first responder with the Manassas Park [Virginia] Fire Department on September 11, 2001 and personally told us stories 'I was fighting fire that day at the Pentagon.’ No, I was on a medic unit that day at the Pentagon and you make a phone call to Manassas Park and you find out that he wasn't even employed there until October 2001,” said a first responder who knows Suprun and only agreed to speak about him if his identity was concealed. The City of Manassas Park confirmed to WFAA that it hired Suprun on October 10, 2001, one month after the 9/11 attacks.

Anonymous sources and leaks have fueled an unhinged quest to flip the Electoral College against Trump. The narrative has been, depending on which rant you are reading at the moment, that Russia "hacked the election," was unfair because it didn't also release RNC emails, Trump is a really bad hombre who must be stopped at all costs, etc. But tonight the anonymous narrative took a new turn. NBC News reports that Obama administration thought Clinton would win, didn't want to risk potential cyber war with Russia:

So the Michigan vote recount revealed corruption and fraud..just not what Jill Stein and Hillary Clinton hoped for. Instead, the recount showed that too many people voted in the Detroit precincts, areas that Hillary won by a large majority. The Detroit News reported:
Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month’s presidential election, according to Wayne County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News. Detailed reports from the office of Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett show optical scanners at 248 of the city’s 662 precincts, or 37 percent, tabulated more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books. Voting irregularities in Detroit have spurred plans for an audit by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s office, Elections Director Chris Thomas said Monday.

A Muslim woman who attends Baruch College recently claimed that three drunken men attacked her on the subway and pulled at her headscarf while yelling "Trump." Now she has been arrested after admitting she made the whole thing up. The New York Daily News reports:
Muslim college student who claimed Trump supporters attacked her on the subway under arrest for making story up She made it all up — and now she’s under arrest. The Muslim college student who claimed she was harassed on the subway by three men who shouted “Donald Trump,” called her a terrorist and tried to rip her hijab off her head has admitted to detectives that she concocted the entire story, the Daily News has learned.

The Electoral College meets December 19, and Democrats are increasing their attempt to steal the election by getting Electors to vote contrary to the vote in their states even if bound by state law. Prof. Lawrence Lessig, one of the first to call for the Electors to go rogue, claims 20 Republican Electors are ready to jump ship, about half of the 38 needed. Politico reports:
Larry Lessig, a Harvard University constitutional law professor who made a brief run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, claimed Tuesday that 20 Republican members of the Electoral College are considering voting against Donald Trump, a figure that would put anti-Trump activists more than halfway toward stalling Trump’s election.

You may recall one form of the left's post-election hysteria was "what do we tell the children?" That died down as recounts and Russian conspiracies took over but Ali Wentworth, the wife of ABC News reporter (and former Clinton staffer) George Stephanopoulos, appeared on The View this week and explained the horror the election has caused for her children. The Washington Free Beacon reported:
George Stephanopoulos’ Wife Tells ‘The View’ Their Daughters Are Scared After Election While discussing the 2016 presidential election with the hosts of ABC’s show “The View,” Wentworth described how her daughters were handling Hillary Clinton’s loss.

We are witnessing nothing short of an attempt to steal the election by some Democrats and a very supportive mainstream and leftwing media, by causing Electors in the Electoral College to go rogue and vote for Hillary, or at least not vote for Trump. The first excuse for this tactic after the election was made by people like Prof. Lawrence Lessig. At least he was honest in his call to have the Electors stop Trump because he didn't like the result and thought Trump would be a horrible president on a host of issues. Honest, but severely misguided. Call that Operation Flip the Electors, Part One.

The Russian hacking/tainted election story line is a particularly fascinating coping mechanism in leftist elite circles. All signs point to a painfully out of touch party platform, the world's worst presidential candidate, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the political landscape, yet Democrats are blaming the Russians for their embarrassing electoral loss. Worse still, there's no new evidence to suggest Russians swayed election results. Sure, the Wikileaks stuff was nasty, but that's old news. Should it be investigated? Probably. Though the same people demanding an investigation into this alleged hacking's electoral impact NOW also declared with certainty that Hillary's home-brewed server was never infiltrated by foreign foes. It's almost like this story line was cooked up as a last ditch effort to overturn the election results. Almost.