Tag: Race

Fraud unmasked

By Steve Woodward

Stay at home in your senior care facility this fall. And vote. Someone you’ve never seen before will show up and collect your absentee ballot, removing the danger of licking a stamp or walking to the mailbox. If you do not know for whom to vote, we can help with that, too. Just leave it to us.

Oh, and do not worry about finding your state issued ID. The collector will not ask for it. He will not even ask for your name. It will be added to the ballot in advance.

Although this proposed scenario reads like something out of a Soviet-era proclamation, it seems perfectly logical to the director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. Director Brisson Bell outlined a lengthy wish list of statutory changes as to how we vote in a memo to Governor Roy Cooper and the General Assembly to “address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on our elections.”

The memo — perhaps we should call it the Bell Dossier — was dated March 26, authored only nine days after Cooper’s St. Patrick’s Day Massacre that shut down restaurants at 5 p.m., thus it was released at the initial onset of corona-steria. The timing strongly suggests Bell and her “voter reform” gang had this list ready to roll out long before a few bad servings of bat tartar rocked Wuhan, China.

The eternal struggle to rig our elections to give the left permanent power is not unique to North Carolina. In fact, erstwhile presidential pretender Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) this week submitted a bill, the VoteSafe Act of 2020, that proposes to spend $5 billion of taxpayers’ dollars “to ensure that voting is safe and accessible.” And easily compromised by teams of fraudsters long after the masks and gloves come off.

The Harris plan is dead on arrival. In hindsight we should be thankful it was not quietly inserted in the $2.2 trillion CARES Act. Closer to home, it will surprise no Republican that Gov. Cooper will do everything in his power to enable Bell and the state BOE to drag her reforms across the finish line.

Bell’s memo runs five single-spaced pages, laying out 14 specific recommendations that she insists are vital because election season is close at hand. Voting as we have known it could kill us all if we do not act. In reality, early voting will not begin until October, half a year from now. Cooper might have opened and closed the state two or three times by then but the threat of the Wuhan Virus carrying over into the fall is unlikely, even if that is the dream of the Left and their media soldiers. Don’t forget, the New York Times early on called it the Trump Virus. They’s rather see Trump go away and the virus stick around for as long as it’s useful. Unfortunately, a few “experts” have suggested a second outbreak later in the year, but these were the same people urging us to fill movie theaters in February.

Some minor aspects of how we live might permanently change when this horror is behind us. Bell’s memo addresses permanency, too. A majority of the changes she proposes would be permanent with a few exceptions. In the same breath, Bell says she is merely reacting to the virus, for the greater good don’t you know, in the short term even as she schemes rigging elections into perpetuity. Her lack of sincerity is almost amusing.

Voter Integrity Project / North Carolina (VIP/NC) provided the public service of reviewing the Bell memo, point by point, and providing analysis of where the red flags are lurking. There are nearly as many as in a Chinese military parade. Here are some of the more reviling elements:

Expand options for absentee ballot requests. Allow fax and email absentee ballot requests. Allow county boards of elections to pre-fill a voter’s information on an absentee request form (and usher in future ballot harvesting).

Reduce or eliminate the witness requirement. Bell uses terms like “social distancing” and again, “COVID-19”, in (explaining) her dream to reduce the ballot witness requirement to one or even none. Let’s see how long this full-blown panic keeps everybody homebound before you allow something this stupid.

“Temporarily” modify restrictions on (ballot) assistance in care facilities. 

In the name of COVID-19, Bell wants county BOEs to be allowed to rig (early voting) operating hours as they did in 2012. We cannot speak for all counties, but the abuses in Wake County were extremely heavy-handed. The Wake BOE also only allowed certain Republican-leaning sites to be open for 10 days while the Democrat sites were open all 17 days.

The bottom line, concludes VIP/NC, is that this is not a response to a rampant virus. This is a page out of a yellowed, dog-eared playbook: Overwhelm the system and then exploit the chaos.

Virus, bad. Remedies, worse.

 

 

 

You’re a racist. Probably.

By Steve Woodward

Not long ago, two people in complete disagreement might have exchanged accusations of one being misinformed or closed-minded, or one simply would dismiss the other as a “jerk”. Then, on to the next tee. But when this author’s reputation was compromised recently by The Pilot newspaper, which published a private e-mail communication from me as a “letter-to-the-editor”, I experienced for myself the new age of 24/7 identity politics.

In subsequent published letters by readers, and elsewhere, I was labeled “racist, bigoted, angry, intolerant, ignorant, vile, hateful, and ugly” and my email content was called out as “discriminatory” and “inflammatory”.

And, because people are increasingly paralyzed by a fear of being associated with such labels, fellow members of a community service organization urged that I apologize or be reprimanded so they would not be seen as “complicit” with my viewpoints.

Although nothing in my exposed private commentary so much as bordered on racially charged rhetoric, and certainly did not include ethnic slurs of any kind — it was merely pointed, verifiable criticism — we are learning that this demonstrates the new normal of how the left and its socialist fringe members move to swiftly punish ideological opponents. Destroy, don’t denounce. Assassinate character, ask questions later. The late Saul Alinsky, author of “Rules for Radicals”, urged unrelenting ridicule of Americans and their values.

Frequent readers of The Pilot know that I am an avowed defender of American values, the Constitution, Conservatism, the Republican Party and President Trump. So it is logical that a recent flurry of criticism by these same readers would contain all of the left’s favorite buzzwords intended to silence people with whom they disagree.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Heather Mac Donald observes that Trump, his supporters and the so-called white privileged in general, are persistently accused of racially charged divisiveness. Yet, “it is the media and Democrat leaders who routinely characterize individuals and groups by race and issue race-based denunciations of large parts of the American polity.”

As baseless accusations escalate the sad truth is that most Americans, even the most proud and loyal, will shrink into silence, afraid of earning a label, albeit unwarranted. Where does it end? Someone posts a scathing critique of a restaurant after a terrible dining experience. It’s an Asian sushi house or a black-owned BBQ joint. Racist! An employer asks an employee to cover garish tattoos on his arms and wash his hair. Bigot! Get out and vote for a pro-Christian, pro-traditional marriage, anti-abortion Republican. Inflammatory! Hate speech! Co-exist!

You are not even safe at church. This week, a 49-person delegation comprised of Brownson Presbyterian Church members, along with local black faith leaders, is traveling by bus to Washington, DC. Brownson is a predominantly white church, but to my knowledge has no history of prohibiting black or Hispanic congregants. Nonetheless, the stated itinerary of the trip focuses on visits to “civil rights monuments and museums … and a daily Bible study … to improve lines of communications within our community.” No time for the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials, or The Smithsonian. Nothing to see there.

The promotion of the bus trip was kicked off over a period of several weeks from the pulpit, and included a guest sermon by the author of  a book entitled, “Waking Up White”. It is an apologetic tome in which she regrets her upbringing amidst “white privilege.” Left unsaid by religious leaders, black and white, is the obvious reality that God determines the race of everyone of us. Furthermore, American society has long accepted the existence of the “black church” absent a hint of malice. But God help anyone who identifies as a member of a “white church”.

A former newspaper known as The New York Times recently announced it is launching The 1619 Project. It is not actually a project, it is a take down, the ultimate denunciation of the legitimacy of the United States of America, and the expansion of a narrative that Trump and his past and future supporters are virulent racists. Here’s the premise:

“The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

What, you do not subscribe to The New York Times? Racist.