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MADISON A Stanton couple asked a burning question in the Dec. 26, 2020, Daily News. Basically it was how did Biden win? Heres how.

Former president Barack Obama regularly tells people, Democracy is hard work. Thats what Ben Franklin meant in 1781. He was leaving Independence Hall in Philadelphia when a woman asked him, Dr. Franklin, what have you given us? He replied, A republic, if you can keep it.

A candidate for president in this country has to have a ground game. Thats the hard work. Super Spreader rallies in the middle of the deadliest epidemic since 1918 look reckless and irresponsible. Furthermore, to suburban women in Detroit, Philadelphia and yes, Omaha, who have never quite forgiven Trump for the Access Hollywood tapes, they look dangerous. These women are mothers and grandmothers and woe betides anyone who looks like he is endangering children and fathers. These women are wonderful foot soldiers for a ground game. In this election cycle, the Democrats had a lot of them.

As for Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, the letter writers do not pause to explain why Republican election officials in all of these states would help Biden unless they were just conscientiously doing their duty.

Hillary Clinton won Nevada in 2016. Not a surprise that Biden won there again. Arizona, however, was a big get. Biden had no coat tails to speak of in down ballot contests for House and Senate but in Arizona, extremely popular former astronaut Mark Kelly, Gabby Giffords husband, was running for John McCains old Senate seat, which he won with roughly 3% more votes than Biden. Kelly, without a doubt, boosted Biden.

The letter writers fail to remember that the FBI and the Justice Department have a firm rule that investigations into candidates, their relatives and close friends are never made public during presidential campaigns. James Comey broke this rule in 2016, which cost Hillary Clinton the election. Despite the fact that the attorney general and the FBI director are both Trump appointees and Republicans, they had the integrity to follow the rule, which cost the attorney general his job.

The letter does not mention that Trump filed 62 lawsuits seeking to overturn election results in various states. Or that the State of Texas and, sadly, the State of Nebraska filed suit on Trumps behalf in the U.S. Supreme Court claiming election fraud. All the cases were dismissed because Trumps attorneys could not prove fraud!

The letter also repeats the report that 79% of Republican voters think the election was stolen. They say so because Trump says so. But its another lie by a serial liar. Sixty-two judges, many of whom Trump appointed, are not wrong!

The letter claims that fat cats like George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg supported the Democrats. Does anybody think the Republicans didnt have fat cats of their own?

The letter claims everybody is against the Republicans. How did the Republicans gain nine seats in the House of Representatives if everybodys against them?

But the real problem with the letter is that it promotes the unfounded belief that the election was corrupted; that the duly constituted officials of six states were powerless to prevent it; that both federal and state courts were complicit. The letter undermines our faith in our institutions.

Remember Obama: Democracy is hard work. There is another election in four years. Pick a better candidate. Organize a better ground game. Never forget, its a republic if you can keep it.

I learned in high school that in a democracy, we have to trust each other, because we are the government. I learned that facts are stubborn things that do not yield to lies. I learned that an argument without facts to support it is a hollow argument.

In fact, Ill bet the author of the letter taught his classes that. Has he forgotten?

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Regarding the results George Moyer | Letters To Editor | norfolkdailynews.com - Norfolk Daily News

Donald Trump vetoed a series of brutal attack ads in the 2020 election campaign, including one that targeted Joe Bidens behavior towards women, because he was afraid of opening his own can of worms.

Biden has been criticized for touching and hugging women in ways widely deemed inappropriate, behavior he has said was not meant to be disrespectful and complaints to which he said he would listen respectfully. In early 2020, he faced a claim that he sexually assaulted a former aide. He forcefully denied it.

Trump famously boasted he was allowed to grab women by the pussy. He has been accused of sexual harassment or assault by no fewer than 25 women. He forcefully denies all such claims. But some have landed him in court and his former attorney Michael Cohen was convicted of violations of campaign finance law over hush money payments made to women before the 2016 election.

The news site Axios reported on Monday night on campaign ads it said were considered by Trump but which proved so far-fetched even he vetoed them.

One, titled Predator, showed Kamala Harris, Bidens running mate who is now the first woman to be vice-president, saying: I know a predator when I see one.

The clip included quotes from Tara Reade, the former aide who accused Biden of assault, and Lucy Flores, a former Nevada state politician who in 2019 told CNN Bidens behaviour towards women including her was disqualifying.

But Trump never wanted to run the predator or womens-style ads against Biden, Axios reported an unnamed campaign source as saying, because he was afraid he was going to open up his own can of worms. Axios said a second unnamed source confirmed the story.

The ads finished with a logo for Parscale Strategy. Brad Parscale was eventually ousted as campaign manager. In a familiar development to those who follow Trumps business dealings, Axios said Trump did not pay for the ads he rejected. Axios also said Parscale attended the ad viewing sessions, often [sitting] so close it bothered the president.

Trump faces a defamation lawsuit from E Jean Carroll, a writer who says he raped her in a department store changing room in the 1990s. Stormy Daniels, an adult film star and director who says she had sex with Trump in Nevada in 2006, also sued for defamation. Trump denies both accusations but reimbursed Cohen for expenditure including a $130,000 payment to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.

According to Axios, among other ads nixed by Trump were one focusing on Bidens health and one that mocked Don Lemon, a CNN anchor, over his coverage of protests against structural racism which gripped the US last summer.

Trump was reported to have said of the Lemon ad: God, thats brutal, but I dont know if we can put it up. Lemon is African American. The ad shows his face gradually whitening, as he becomes a clown.

Trump lost the election by 306-232 in the electoral college a result he called a landslide when it was in his favor over Hillary Clinton and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. He refused to concede defeat and pursued baseless claims of electoral fraud in court, losing almost all such cases.

Trump is now in Florida. In Washington on Tuesday, his second impeachment trial will begin. He is charged with inciting an insurrection, the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. Shortly before the deadly riot, at a rally near the White House, he told supporters to fight like hell to overturn his election defeat.

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Trump vetoed ads attacking Biden's record on women to avoid can of worms report - The Guardian

Its with heavy hearts that we write this letter. We believe that all of us, no matter which side of the political spectrum we happen to be on, want a country where our children and loved ones can thrive.

We believe that, if we took the time to look closely, wed find that most of us have a great deal in common.

But we are currently living in a time when our very lives have been politicized to the point where the divisions between us sometimes seem unbridgeable and possibly beyond repair.

These differences become especially apparent when we try to talk across our divides about the recent election.

We know that facts these days after being called into question so often have lost some of their power to persuade, but unless we can agree on a certain set of reality-based assumptions, we will be lost to one another.

So in response to questions being raised about our current political climate, we would like to offer some facts.

Some folks are asking, for example, why it is OK for Hillary Clinton to say the 2016 election wasnt fair, while Donald Trump is criticized for saying the same thing about the 2020 election, with 75 million Americans to back him up.

Here are the facts:

Back in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes.

Nevertheless, she conceded the election to Donald Trump when he was declared the winner on Nov. 9 because by that date he had received the requisite number of electoral college votes (304).

In 2020, for a second time, Trump lost the popular vote. It is true that he earned the votes of 75 million Americans. But Joe Biden won over 81 million votes, the most of any presidential candidate in U.S. history. Biden then went on to earn the number of electoral college votes needed to win the election (306).

In spite of this, however, Trump has to this day refused to declare Biden the winner.

In addition, while Clinton honored the peaceful transition of power that stands as one of the benchmarks of a functioning democracy, Trump has insisted that the election was stolen and has used everything in his power to block that transition, including inciting his followers to raid the U.S. Capitol, a reckless insurrection that left 5 people dead and over 100 Capitol officers injured.

That assault was a wound to our national psyche that still festers weeks later and will (to say the least) prove challenging to heal.

Another question being raised has to do with impeachment. If Trump was not convicted after his first impeachment hearing, does this mean he was not impeached? The answer is no.

Here are the facts. The impeachment process has two parts. The House votes to impeach, after which the Senate conducts a trial and decides whether to convict.

This process was established by our Constitution as a way of providing checks and balances in the event of presidential overreach.

The House has now voted twice to bring articles of impeachment against Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, specifically for abusing the powers of his office.

Regardless of whether the Senate votes to convict, those impeachment judgments will stand. Donald Trump will remain the only U.S. president who has been impeached twice, an indelible stain on his record and on his legacy.

A third question being raised concerns voter fraud. Perhaps, some suggest, the Capitol riots might not have happened if the courts had allowed voter fraud evidence to be heard.

This is possibly the point of greatest contention, the belief on the part of Trumps followers that the election was rife with voter fraud.

Again, here are the facts. William Barr, Trumps Attorney General, said in no uncertain terms that no evidence of widespread voter fraud was found in the 2020 election.

In multiple instances there were over 60 hearings across the country the former presidents lawyers brought cases to the courts claiming voter fraud, and one by one these cases were dismissed or found to be without merit due to lack of evidence.

Judges appointed by Trump dismissed these cases. The justices on the Supreme Court, three of whom were appointed by Trump himself, dismissed claims of fraud. The top election security official (a Republican) declared the election the most secure in American history. The truth is that no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election has ever been produced.

And here is the last, most important fact.

Joe Biden has been chosen in a fair election as our 46th president. Americas strength comes from our ability to work together to knit together a landscape of diverse people into one nation.

E pluribus unum: out of many, one.

The task is not easy, but its worth doing.

For all our sakes, we need to try.

Karen Elias, a Democrat, and Kathy Ebeling, a Republican, are both retired local educators who are eager to find ways, in this difficult time, to find common ground and work toward unity.

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Out of many, one | News, Sports, Jobs - The Express - Lock Haven Express

Of the many battles in the decade-long Syrian civil war, few have captured international attention like the Battle of Koban. Fought between September 2014 and January 2015 for control of the predominately Kurdish town of Koban, the battle pitted the then-ascendant Islamic State against the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), a left-wing Kurdish militia that controlled several predominately Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria (known to Kurds as Rojava the west). The YPGs all-women wing, the Womens Protection Units (YPJ), featured prominently.

The image of young female fighters resisting the advance of ISIS, a group that enforced the most draconian forms of patriarchal rule and routinely used rape as a weapon of war, inspired many on the international left. Kurdish militias decimated ISISs ranks while building a radical enclave based on principles of direct democracy.

Yet the Kurds have also attracted some unlikely supporters namely, those who would rather focus on what theyve been against than what theyre fighting for.

The US military, hardly a fan of leftist revolutions, allied with the Kurds to counter ISIS after failing to come to an agreement with Turkey, a fellow NATO member. When President Trump pulled American forces from the Turkish border in the autumn of 2019, paving the way for an invasion by Turkish-backed Islamists, the national security establishment revolted, with Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigning. Israels right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also expressed his solidarity with the gallant Kurdish people.

And earlier this week a day before the sixth anniversary of the YPGs victory over ISIS at Koban news broke that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, are developing a television series based on Gayle Tzemach Lemmons The Daughters of Kobani.

While information on the Clintons project is scant and The Daughters of Kobaniis yet to be released, Hollywood Reporter provided some details:

Daughters of Kobaniis based on hundreds of hours of interviews and on-the-ground reporting about the all-female Kurdish militia who took on ISIS in Northern Syria and won. Following the unlikely showdown emerged a fighting force who spread their own political vision and established gender equality in their corner of the Middle East and beyond. In the process, they earned the respect and significant military support of U.S. Special Operations Forces.

The Clintons are not the first to attempt to tell the story of the YPJ. In 2018 there was a release of Les filles du soleil, written and directed by French actress Eva Husson, which portrayed a French journalist and her interactions with an all-female battalion. Another French production, 2019s Surs darmes, written by French feminist and arch-secularist Caroline Fourest, focused on two young French women who traveled to Rojava to fight alongside the female militias. In 2020, yet another production on Rojava was released, Hulus No Mans Land, created by Ron Leshem, Maria Feldman, and Eitan Mansuri. This time the protagonist was a French man who journeys to Syria in search of his sister.

There are through lines in all these productions. First, they train their cameras on westerners, with the YPJ and the Syrian Civil War serving as romanticized backdrops. As one reviewer of No Mans Land noted, dont be fooled into thinking that No Mans Land is, on any level, the story of the YPJ, an elite unit of Kurdish freedom fighters, all women. Its barely, if at all, a story about the Syrian civil war.

Second, Kurdish involvement in these productions has been relatively limited. These are not Kurdish stories but stories about westerners interactions with the exotic. In the case of the two French productions, the stories seem to be more a thinly veiled salvo in their countrys cultural wars than an exploration of the Kurdish movement in Syria.

And, thirdly, they largely obscure the explicitly leftist politics of the Kurds in Syria. In its place we are presented with a generic, nonthreatening, and ultimately vacuous fight for freedom perhaps best summed up as western encounters with Jihadi-killing girl boss snipers.

So where does this leave us with The Daughters of Kobani? The author of the adapted book, journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, is a close ally of Hillary Clinton and the epitome of elite girl boss feminism. An advocate of female empowerment through entrepreneurship, her literary debut, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011), told the story of an Afghan businesswoman operating under the strictures of the Taliban.

In 2015, she published another tome on female emancipation, Ashleys War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield an uplifting story of women deployed in combat roles in Afghanistan that earned endorsements and blurbs from such luminaries as Senator John McCain and Sheryl Sandberg.

The Daughters of Kobani, to be fair, wont be released until next month. However, one might be forgiven for suspecting that the anti-capitalistm of the YPG and YPJ which draws on the work of Brooklyn-born anarchist Murray Bookchin and the writings of Abdullah calan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an organization that has waged war against Ankara since 1984 and that the United States sees as a terrorist organization will be omitted in favor of one that focuses on girls kicking ass.

The extensive role of female fighters in Koban wasnt some historical aberration, a curiosity brought about by the peculiarities of the Syrian civil war and discovered by Western elites. In the 1970s and 80s, several left-wing Kurdish political organizations maintained armed female units, most notably the Iranian-based group Komala. The female fighters of the YPJ can trace their historical lineage back to the PKK, which has a long tradition of female participation.

This brings us to the involvement of the Clintons and the historical irony it presents. During the 1990s, Bill Clintons administration sold and transferred vast amounts of weapons to Turkey, weapons that were primarily used in Ankaras fight against the PKK. American intelligence proved critical in the capture of Abdullah calan by Turkish special forces in 1999.

Of course, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton arent responsible for the actions of Bill Clinton. But it will be more than a little interesting to see how they tackle, for instance, the figure of calan someone venerated by the fighters of the YPJ yet reviled by the United States.

Many Kurds will be pleased at any mention of their community in western culture considering their all most complete absence. As Kurdish filmmaker Beri Shalmashi points out, Ten years ago we were pleased just to have the name Kurd mentioned. I can attest to this myself: I felt an almost irrational excitement when Cotyar Ghazi, a character in the popular Expanse series of novels, was revealed to be of Kurdish descent. There will also be some who feel a sense of satisfaction at the apoplectic rage that news of the production has triggered in the Turkish press.

Yet there is little reason to hope that a Clinton-led production based on a book by an establishment journalist will address the deficits found in earlier efforts to tell the story of Rojavas female fighters. More than likely, we will get a romantic fantasy of the Kurdish female fighter that obfuscates the real struggle in Syria and incorporates it into a broader war on terrorism that serves the interests of militarists like the Clintons.

And the vision of an egalitarian society for which the men and women of Koban have fought a vision that is antithetical to Clintonian liberalism will be hidden, once again, behind a veil of sanitized and exoticized cliches.

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The Clintons Are Making a TV Show About Female Kurdish Fighters. That's Absurd. - Jacobin magazine

Axios has publisheda massive 3,000-word-plus report detailing what it describes as "the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency."

The meeting revolves aroundconspiracy-spewing attorney Sidney Powell, along with former national security adviser Mike Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, storming into the Oval Office and trying to convince former President Donald Trump to command federal law enforcement officials to seize Dominion voting machines.

The report is filled with moments of slapstick comedy that highlight the ineptitude of the former president's allies. Here are the five funniest parts.

1. Sidney Powell gets called out for claiming Dominion flipped a county that Trump won.

During the meeting, Powell told Trump that she could prove that Dominion voting machines flipped votes to President Joe Biden in a Georgia county.

White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann, however, immediately spotted a flaw in Powell's claims: Namely, Trump had actually won the county in question.

"So your theory is that Dominion intentionally flipped the votes so we couldwinthat county?" he asked her incredulously.

2. Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne gets utterly humiliated after trash talking Trump's staff members.

Byrne, who had never before met the president in person, nonetheless didn't hesitate to throw his weight around and accuse his staff members of being disloyal for not doing enough to help him overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"You're a quitter," Byrne told Herschmann.

"Do you even know who the f*ck I am, you idiot?" Herschmann asked him.

"Yeah, you're Patrick Cipollone," Byrne said.

"Wrong!" Herschmann shouted. "Wrong, you idiot!"

3. Sidney Powell gets lambasted for making embarrassing spelling mistakes in her legal filings.

White House staff secretary Derek Lyons quickly ran out of patience with Powell,whose "kraken" lawsuits infamously crashed and burnedwhen brought before courts.

"You've brought 60 cases," Lyons told Powell. "And you've lost every case you've had!"

Lyons not only ripped into Powell's legal arguments, but her sloppy spelling and grammar.

"You somehow managed to misspell the word 'District' three different ways in your suits," he told her.

4. Patrick Byrne claims that he gave Hillary Clinton an $18 million bribe as part of an FBI sting.

In one of the more nonsensical portions of the meeting, Byrne repeatedly claimed that he knew the FBI to be corrupt because they used him to catch Hillary Clinton taking bribes but somehow never arrested her.

"I know how this works," he said. "I bribed Hillary Clinton $18 million on behalf of the FBI for a sting operation."

Herschmann was incredulous and demanded to know what Byrne was talking about. The former Overstock CEO never elaborated, and yet still stood by his claim that he had successfully bribed the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

5. Mark Meadows and other staffers scrambled to stop Trump from appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate voter fraud.

Powell tried to convince Trump that he needed to appoint her as special counsel to probe voter fraud allegations, which is something Trump did not have the authority to do.

Former chief of staff Mark Meadows could not believe that such a proposal was being contemplated and quickly tried to throw cold water on it to dissuade the president from trying to make it happen.

"Meadows indicated that he was trying to wrap his mind around what exactly Powell's role would entail," reports Axios. "He told Powell she would have to fill out the SF-86 questionnaire before starting as special counsel. This was seen as a delaying tactic. The sense in the room was that Trump might actually greenlight this extraordinary proposal."

Read the entire report here.

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5 hilarious details from "the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency" - Salon