Recent Surpreme Court Decision Concerning Churches

[Randy Bosch]

Peter, you speculate on things of which you cannot possibly have knowledge. But that's OK.
You write:
As to whether their claims have merit, I'm not sure how you personally would know either way. But you seem awfully opposed to settling the dispute through normal legal channels.

I comment:
No, I do not "personally" know. But I do know that every court case has been tossed, sometimes with a scathing rebuke from the judge, on occasion a conservative, Republican-appointed judge. So the "normal legal channels" have been surfed, the surfers either dunked or drowned, their muddled heads bonked on a reef. I am certainly not opposed to these "normal legal channels", but you seem to be opposed to accepting their decisions.
And meanwhile the President and Guiliani continue to - without evidence - to howl about the "stolen" election. This is not "normal legal channels," this is lying and an attempt to nullify the election.
A recent column, not immediately at hand, noted that after World War I, German generals and leaders insisted that they had not "lost" the war, that the truce was unfairly forced upon them and that they actually won the war. This was used to build up opposition to the victors in the war and to convince the Germans that their valid "victory" had been denied them.
This is why I remain concerned about the Man in the White House, who has now raised $170 million since the election in "campaign" funds or "election defense funds", and the rumblings about him running again.
I shall try to find the Newsweek article dissecting his weirdly crazed phone call with the Fox News person. And these were not "spins," they are actual words he has spoken and those words compared with objective, factual truth.
P.S. As I write this, Mr.Teigen has cited the article about dolchstosslegende.

Nobody "won" WWI except on paper.  All the involved European powers were totally exhausted and to continue (excepting the intervention of the USArmy) would have totally destroyed the culture and economies of the countries involved (and actually did for Russia who had earlier sued for peace with a then-"victorious" German Imperial Army).
Those in Europe who thought they "won" then exacted ruinous penalties on Germany and Austro-Hungary, though many lives were saved -- except for lighting the fuse for the next debacle.

I don't think anyone "wins" a war.

[Randy Bosch]

Do you believe that Elvis is dead?

Yes. So what? The same people who told us on election night that they could now say that the Democrats would pick up between 5-15 seats in the House have now gradually had to admit that in reality the Democrats lost 12-13 seats in the House. What they were so absolutely confident about turned out to be almost the opposite of the truth. There is no point in putting stock in news accounts until they are verified. So why not wait until everything settles down before making a declaration? If it turns out that illegally cast ballots get disqualified, it will likely also turn out that several states will flip. We will find out. There is no reason to have a dogmatic opinion in advance of the fact.

When will you consider things "settled down"? When one lawsuit (or 30) are thrown out, the President and his team just file another one. I recall being told by opponents, "Just saying the same thing over and over and over again doesn't make it true."

The endless "Russia, Russia, Russia" investigations, lawsuits, and talking heads prove your point.

Alternatively, on the COVID front, even CNN now touts newly disclosed leaks of tons of information proving that China hid the origins and spread of the virus, disproving your point.

[Randy Bosch]

I tried to inject some humor into the discussion with the Elvis joke.  Seriously, the issue of denial is serious and there is a lesson from history to consider.  Jochen Bittner wrote in the Times about 1918 Germany and the alarmism from the term "Dolchstosslegende" or stab-in-the-back.  "It's core claim was that Imperial Germany never lost World War I.  Defeat, its proponents said, was declared but now warranted.  It was a conspiracy, a con, a capitulation--a grave betrayal that forever stained the nation."  Nobody is saying that President Trump is like Hitler "but the Dolchstosslegende provides a warning. " It's laughable that Trump makes his claims but it is no joke.    "Instead the campaign i.e. the Trump claims, should be seen as what it is:  an attempt to elevate 'They stole it' to the level of legend, perhaps seeding for the future social polarization and division on a scale America has never seen."

You highlighted the front end of Jochen Bittner's article (I read it), but did not reference the second half, where he similarly excoriated the Clinton campaign of 2016 and the last 4 years.  Clinton conceded and did not fight in court (at least we have not been informed of legal challenges by the media), but continued until a few months ago to refer to Trump as an "illegitimate President", and the attempts to overturn that "grave betrayal" continue to this day.

Read the whole article, and you will find that this 21st Century Dolchstosslegende is bi-partisan.

[peter_speckhard]

Peter:
Currently enough ballots are disputed in enough states to have swayed the election.

Me:
I say hogwash, and I would ask you to name them and count them, but that would be being obsessed with certain things. No one anywhere, any place, in any situation, has found any evidence of fraud or of miscounting that would change the result. That is an objective fact.
(But then, so is an earth of multi-billion years birth and a humanity shaped by evolution.)

Assuming you discount any account of fraud or miscounting as hogwash, I guess you could say in a mere tautological sense that all such hogwash is hogwash. That such ballots are in dispute is not hogwash, though, it is the simple fact; someone is disputing them. As to whether their claims have merit, I'm not sure how you personally would know either way. But you seem awfully opposed to settling the dispute through normal legal channels.

Some suspicious things at least call for some plausible explanation. For example, the ballots drops in Pennsylvania that went well over 99% for Biden and provided several times the margin of victory. How does that happen? What demographic of people voted 99.6% for Biden? Early voters? African-Americans? When 570,000 votes come in for Biden with just over 3,000 for Trump in the same drops, the prima facie explanation is fraud unless someone explains how such numbers can possibly make sense. There is no demographic of voter, not even taking into account several layers of intersectionality, that voted in such numbers in such a lopsided way. There may be some explanation, but I've yet to hear it, and it is insulting to be told that any questioning of such ballot drops is conspiracy theory hogwash. I'm sure if they did a recount and suddenly they found a cache of ballots that hadn't been counted before, and those ballots went 85,000 to 500 in favor in Trump, giving him the state, you'd think, "Wait a minute. How can that be? I'd like to look into that."

Or maybe your source of information is faulty. Sites I looked at said that 99% of the votes in Philadelphia had been counted; not that 99% were for Biden. Can you post where you got your statistics?

This article is a few days old, and is only one of the places the same story appears. I was mistaken that the data dumps in question were 99.4% for Biden, not 99.6% as I said upstream. Perils of going from memory. Still, the point remains-- until there is some plausible explanation for how any set of validly cast ballots, no matter what the demographic, could be that lopsided, fraud remains the most reasonable explanation. I could see (maybe) some precinct of 200 people going 199-1 in favor of one candidate. That would be extremely hard to believe but not completely unbelievable. But I can't see how that same ratio could possibly play out over hundreds of thousands of voters. There simply is no county, no racial demographic, no combination of early-voting, suburban, African-American women vting bloc that has those kinds of numbers with those kinds of percentages. So the question becomes, where was that data coming from? How did they isolate that many validly cast ballots for one candidate into one or two data dumps? Even if there are matching paper ballots with signatures and everything, how did they get them into batches of 99.4% for Biden? I'm willing to concede there could be an explanation that makes more sense than fraud, but nobody is sharing it.

 https://spectator.org/pennsylvania-bombshell-biden-99-4-vs-trump-0-6/

[Charles Austin]

If this “information” has any validity, one wonders how it is that you and the spectator seem to be interested in it but none of the Trump lawyers brought it forth in any of their court cases. Or if they did there were still reasons why nearly 40 of those cases have been now dismissed and laughed at.
And just now, Bill Barr, who would twist the constitution into a pretzel to back up  Trump, And who, Trump suggested, could have taken  extraordinary measures that would’ve mis-used the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate alleged fraud, admits that there is no evidence of any voter fraud on any level that would change the results of the election.
I suspect that by tomorrow morning he will have been fired.

[peter_speckhard]

If this “information” has any validity, one wonders how it is that you and the spectator seem to be interested in it but none of the Trump lawyers brought it forth in any of their court cases. Or if they did there were still reasons why nearly 40 of those cases have been now dismissed and laughed at.
And just now, Bill Barr, who would twist the constitution into a pretzel to back up  Trump, And who, Trump suggested, could have taken  extraordinary measures that would’ve mis-used the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate alleged fraud, admits that there is no evidence of any voter fraud on any level that would change the results of the election.
I suspect that by tomorrow morning he will have been fired.

Actually, lots of people are talking about it. You have no explanation. Frankly, an ELCA or LCMS convention couldn’t get a 99.4% vote affirming the doctrine of the Trinity. You seem to think that because the NYT isn’t treating it as a problem, therefore it isn’t a problem. And maybe there is some perfectly reasonable explanation for how there managed to be some pile of hundreds of thousands of votes that went 99.4% for Biden. But you haven’t given me one. So just going by the science, as they say, I’m saying fraud is the Occam’s Razor best explanation.

[Charles Austin]

Then why, Peter, were the court cases brought by Trump supporters all thrown out? Were the  lawyers just too inept to draw attention to something like that? And you do know that the Pennsylvania secretary of state has debunked what was presented by the folks at the hearing called only by Rudy Giuliani, The former New York mayor has gone further off the rails than the president. So it appears that there may be some “other explanation” for those votes. But in any case, none of what was alleged at that so-called hearing was ever proven or verified.
I simply do not understand the refusal to admit but the election was not compromise in any way. There is no doubt that there were mis-cast or missed counted or even some votes cast illegally. But there is no evidence of any significant result changing voter fraud.
The only reason people keep talking about it is to set the public up for the lies and sleazy tactics yet to come.
Republicans! Come home. Come back and take control of your party. Don’t let this guy and the members of his cult  possess it any longer.

[peter_speckhard]

Then why, Peter, were the court cases brought by Trump supporters all thrown out? Were the  lawyers just too inept to draw attention to something like that? And you do know that the Pennsylvania secretary of state has debunked what was presented by the folks at the hearing called only by Rudy Giuliani, The former New York mayor has gone further off the rails than the president. So it appears that there may be some “other explanation” for those votes. But in any case, none of what was alleged at that so-called hearing was ever proven or verified.
I simply do not understand the refusal to admit but the election was not compromise in any way. There is no doubt that there were mis-cast or missed counted or even some votes cast illegally. But there is no evidence of any significant result changing voter fraud.
The only reason people keep talking about it is to set the public up for the lies and sleazy tactics yet to come.
Republicans! Come home. Come back and take control of your party. Don’t let this guy and the members of his cult  possess it any longer.

What is it proof of? As long as Dems resist voter ID laws, as long as they approve mailing out ballots unsolicited to everyone on an outdated voter registration list, as long as they refuse even to allow signature match (which even Obama claimed was the only way mail in ballots could be accepted) there is no way to prove fraud. The data dump that went 99.4% to Biden isn’t in and of itself proof of anything other than you will believe anything. In Philly, they destroyed all the envelopes before a request for signature matches could be made. Then they said there was no proof the signature didn’t match. In Atlanta they said a water main break required them to stop counting and sent everyone home. Then they finished counting without observers, and there is no evidence anywhere of any water main break having happened. Is that proof? No. But it is awfully fishy. The implausible turnout in Milwaukee, etc. If you or anyone would actually explain those things in a way that was even kind of plausible it would go a long way toward making a potential Biden presidency valid in many people’s eyes. But you don’t. You just say, “There is no proof,” as though that puts the matter of extreme fishiness to rest.

Again, if you can explain things in a way that makes sense, great. That’s what happened with the one claim of vote tampering in Michigan. Someone looked at the claim seriously and showed the problem with it. And that was fine. I accept that. But if I smell something and say, “What’s that smell?” I don’t accept assurances that there is no smell as an explanation for why I’m smelling. Frankly, I think you smell it too, which is why you’re so desperate to have everyone drop the subject.

[Norman Teigen]

"Clinton" nowhere appears in the Jochen Bittner piece about Dolchstossegende.  You have fabricated the reference. 

[peter_speckhard]

"Clinton" nowhere appears in the Jochen Bittner piece about Dolchstossegende.  You have fabricated the reference.

This is the sort of attitude I’m talking about. Are you sure he fabricated the reference?

[James S. Rustad]

Assuming you discount any account of fraud or miscounting as hogwash, I guess you could say in a mere tautological sense that all such hogwash is hogwash. That such ballots are in dispute is not hogwash, though, it is the simple fact; someone is disputing them. As to whether their claims have merit, I'm not sure how you personally would know either way. But you seem awfully opposed to settling the dispute through normal legal channels.

Some suspicious things at least call for some plausible explanation. For example, the ballots drops in Pennsylvania that went well over 99% for Biden and provided several times the margin of victory. How does that happen? What demographic of people voted 99.6% for Biden? Early voters? African-Americans? When 570,000 votes come in for Biden with just over 3,000 for Trump in the same drops, the prima facie explanation is fraud unless someone explains how such numbers can possibly make sense. There is no demographic of voter, not even taking into account several layers of intersectionality, that voted in such numbers in such a lopsided way. There may be some explanation, but I've yet to hear it, and it is insulting to be told that any questioning of such ballot drops is conspiracy theory hogwash. I'm sure if they did a recount and suddenly they found a cache of ballots that hadn't been counted before, and those ballots went 85,000 to 500 in favor in Trump, giving him the state, you'd think, "Wait a minute. How can that be? I'd like to look into that."

Or maybe your source of information is faulty. Sites I looked at said that 99% of the votes in Philadelphia had been counted; not that 99% were for Biden. Can you post where you got your statistics?

Please respond to what Peter said, not what you think he said.  He never stated that 99% of votes in Philadelphia were for Biden.  He said that certain "ballot drops" in Pennsylvania were well over 99% for Biden.  A "ballot drop" is a batch of ballots, in this case in the state of Pennsylvania, not all of the ballots for the city of Pennsylvania.

[Brian Stoffregen]

Do you believe that Elvis is dead?

Yes. So what? The same people who told us on election night that they could now say that the Democrats would pick up between 5-15 seats in the House have now gradually had to admit that in reality the Democrats lost 12-13 seats in the House. What they were so absolutely confident about turned out to be almost the opposite of the truth. There is no point in putting stock in news accounts until they are verified. So why not wait until everything settles down before making a declaration? If it turns out that illegally cast ballots get disqualified, it will likely also turn out that several states will flip. We will find out. There is no reason to have a dogmatic opinion in advance of the fact.

When will you consider things "settled down"? When one lawsuit (or 30) are thrown out, the President and his team just file another one. I recall being told by opponents, "Just saying the same thing over and over and over again doesn't make it true."

The endless "Russia, Russia, Russia" investigations, lawsuits, and talking heads prove your point.

The investigation proved that Russia interfered. What some were saying did prove to be true. What wasn't prove was collusion with the Russian by Trump's people.

Alternatively, on the COVID front, even CNN now touts newly disclosed leaks of tons of information proving that China hid the origins and spread of the virus, disproving your point.

Just because something is said over and over again doesn't mean it's false either; but when it's prove false, like election fraud, and one still keeps repeating, "Fraud, fraud, fraud," what would you call that?

[Brian Stoffregen]

Assuming you discount any account of fraud or miscounting as hogwash, I guess you could say in a mere tautological sense that all such hogwash is hogwash. That such ballots are in dispute is not hogwash, though, it is the simple fact; someone is disputing them. As to whether their claims have merit, I'm not sure how you personally would know either way. But you seem awfully opposed to settling the dispute through normal legal channels.

Some suspicious things at least call for some plausible explanation. For example, the ballots drops in Pennsylvania that went well over 99% for Biden and provided several times the margin of victory. How does that happen? What demographic of people voted 99.6% for Biden? Early voters? African-Americans? When 570,000 votes come in for Biden with just over 3,000 for Trump in the same drops, the prima facie explanation is fraud unless someone explains how such numbers can possibly make sense. There is no demographic of voter, not even taking into account several layers of intersectionality, that voted in such numbers in such a lopsided way. There may be some explanation, but I've yet to hear it, and it is insulting to be told that any questioning of such ballot drops is conspiracy theory hogwash. I'm sure if they did a recount and suddenly they found a cache of ballots that hadn't been counted before, and those ballots went 85,000 to 500 in favor in Trump, giving him the state, you'd think, "Wait a minute. How can that be? I'd like to look into that."

Or maybe your source of information is faulty. Sites I looked at said that 99% of the votes in Philadelphia had been counted; not that 99% were for Biden. Can you post where you got your statistics?

Please respond to what Peter said, not what you think he said.  He never stated that 99% of votes in Philadelphia were for Biden.  He said that certain "ballot drops" in Pennsylvania were well over 99% for Biden.  A "ballot drop" is a batch of ballots, in this case in the state of Pennsylvania, not all of the ballots for the city of Pennsylvania.

I know what he said. I looked for evidence of it online. I didn't find it. I reported what I did find. I asked for his sources. I still have seen them. It wouldn't be the first time that someone, not likely Peter here, misread some statistic, and reported as fact the misreading (I've been guilty of that,) and the misreading gets spread as the facts.

[peter_speckhard]

Assuming you discount any account of fraud or miscounting as hogwash, I guess you could say in a mere tautological sense that all such hogwash is hogwash. That such ballots are in dispute is not hogwash, though, it is the simple fact; someone is disputing them. As to whether their claims have merit, I'm not sure how you personally would know either way. But you seem awfully opposed to settling the dispute through normal legal channels.

Some suspicious things at least call for some plausible explanation. For example, the ballots drops in Pennsylvania that went well over 99% for Biden and provided several times the margin of victory. How does that happen? What demographic of people voted 99.6% for Biden? Early voters? African-Americans? When 570,000 votes come in for Biden with just over 3,000 for Trump in the same drops, the prima facie explanation is fraud unless someone explains how such numbers can possibly make sense. There is no demographic of voter, not even taking into account several layers of intersectionality, that voted in such numbers in such a lopsided way. There may be some explanation, but I've yet to hear it, and it is insulting to be told that any questioning of such ballot drops is conspiracy theory hogwash. I'm sure if they did a recount and suddenly they found a cache of ballots that hadn't been counted before, and those ballots went 85,000 to 500 in favor in Trump, giving him the state, you'd think, "Wait a minute. How can that be? I'd like to look into that."

Or maybe your source of information is faulty. Sites I looked at said that 99% of the votes in Philadelphia had been counted; not that 99% were for Biden. Can you post where you got your statistics?

Please respond to what Peter said, not what you think he said.  He never stated that 99% of votes in Philadelphia were for Biden.  He said that certain "ballot drops" in Pennsylvania were well over 99% for Biden.  A "ballot drop" is a batch of ballots, in this case in the state of Pennsylvania, not all of the ballots for the city of Pennsylvania.

I know what he said. I looked for evidence of it online. I didn't find it. I reported what I did find. I asked for his sources. I still have seen them. It wouldn't be the first time that someone, not likely Peter here, misread some statistic, and reported as fact the misreading (I've been guilty of that,) and the misreading gets spread as the facts.

I posted a link to  one of my sources, among many that have examined the same data, in this forum. You obviously didn’t read it. Then you claimed it wasn’t posted.

[Dan Fienen]

The endless "Russia, Russia, Russia" investigations, lawsuits, and talking heads prove your point.

The investigation proved that Russia interfered. What some were saying did prove to be true. What wasn't prove was collusion with the Russian by Trump's people.

Did the allegation that Russia attempted to interfere with the election need a special prosecutor, several congressional investigations, a couple of years of going through the evidence, with periodic breathless that any day now the investigation would reveal the smoking gun? Investigation into the Russian attempts at interference could have been adequately undertaken at a much lower with much less anticipation and hype as to the results. It was the alleged connection to Trump and assurance of imminent discover of proof of his duplicitous election win that hyped the investigation and allow Trump's opponents to cloud much of his term in office. Also, it seems apparent from the investigation that while the Russians interfered, it was not enough to materially affect the outcome of the election. This obsession over Russian interference in 2016 seems as warrented as Trump's obsession over fraud in the 2020.