Planning chaos 165

“The Resistance” has drawn up plans to get Donald Trump out of the White House and Joe Biden into it, whether that’s what the electorate wants or not.

Here’s an extract from the document outlining their plans. It needs to be read in full.

Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition

In June 2020 the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) convened a bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts in a series of 2020 election crisis scenario planning exercises. TIP organized four scenario exercises to identify risks to the rule of law or to the integrity of the democratic process in the period between Election Day (November 3, 2020) and Inauguration Day (January 20, 2021), with an eye toward mitigation and/or prevention of worst-case outcomes.

In one scenario, the exercise posited that the winner of the election was not known as of the morning after the election and the outcome of the race was too close to predict with certainty.

In another, the exercise began with the premise that Democratic party candidate Joe Biden won the popular vote and the Electoral College by a healthy margin.

In a third, the exercise assumed that President Trump won the Electoral College vote but again lost the popular vote by a healthy margin.

The fourth exercise began with the premise that Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral College by a narrow margin.

One scenario they didn’t visualize – being simply unable to believe it could possibly happen? – is an overwhelming victory  for Trump: his winning the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, both by a huge margin. 

That is the result that the electorate must deliver if we are to stand any chance of avoiding more and worse violent chaos (carried out in the name of democracy and the rule of law).

Although that outcome is apparently unthinkable to the planners, yet they fear it. Their fear shows in the extreme lengths they are preparing to go to if Trump wins by a narrow margin or by Electoral College votes but not the popular vote. These include an attempt to break up the union by secession of the three far-left western states, California, Oregon, Washington, which would unite to form a new country, “Cascadia”.

Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness:

Consider yourselves warned, America. …

A vengeful and well-funded coalition of Trump-hating insurrectionists are prepping the battlefield for a post-election civil war, threatening not only to extend the 2020 election into 2021 but to weaponize every tool at their disposal to make sure Joe Biden assumes the presidency even if President Trump legitimately wins.

The very same sore losers on the Left and NeverTrump Right who still refuse to accept the results of the 2016 presidential contest are preparing to do whatever it takes—including promote the secession of western states—to force the removal of Donald Trump next January.

Their plan, using the intentionally misleading title, Transition Integrity Project, outlines alarming and wholly unconstitutional responses to a number of post-election scenarios. Once upon a time, I would’ve read such a far-fetched document through tears of laughter. But considering the desperation and depravity of the people involved, this terrifying roadmap needs to be taken seriously.

Organizers, including Clinton loyalist John Podesta and NeverTrump leader Bill Kristol, have been playing war games for the past few months, plotting how to deploy media, government, and public armies to install Biden no matter what. Their scorched earth strategy rests on two factors: the use of widespread mail-in voting, intended to delay the official result so they can manipulate the outcome while stoking civil unrest until Republicans cry uncle, and the notion that if he loses, President Trump will claim the Democrats stole the election, a legitimate possibility that this plan only serves to further validate.

The four options described in the report, ranging from a Biden landslide to a slim Trump victory, would propel a constitutional crisis which our already frayed populace is ill-equipped to endure …

Teams of imaginary players, representing both campaigns and supporting interests, explored each potential result. (Kristol recently bragged on Twitter that he played the role of President Trump.) Bad guys include Attorney General William Barr; good guys include Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

“In the scenario that most closely mirrored the 2016 election results (e.g., the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College), Team Biden pushed to overturn certified results in states with Democratic Governors,” the participants previewed.

To buy time as they harvest Democratic ballots in tight contests after Election Day, the TIP operation will harness support from all living former presidents and anti-Trump Republicans such as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to urge patience from the public in the name of “election integrity”. Faith leaders will call for calm even as Democrats stoke unrest; in order to involve corporate America in their fight—which shouldn’t be a heavy lift—anti-Trump forces will initiate nationwide work stoppages and strikes.

“Team Biden almost always called for and relied on mass protests to demonstrate the public’s commitment to a ‘legitimate’ outcome, with the objective of hardening the resolve of Democratic elected officials to fight and take action.” (The group at one point envisioned at least 4 million Biden supporters taking to the streets with warnings of “violent skirmishes and vandalism“.)

Those Democratic elected officials, according to the plan, include the governors and legislatures of swing states. One scene may have accidentally revealed the makings of a false flag operation after November 3 if Michigan is the deciding state.

“A rogue individual destroyed a large number of ballots believed to have supported Biden, leaving Trump a narrow electoral win,” the group imagined. “The Governor of Michigan used this abnormality as justification to send a separate, pro-Biden set of electors to DC.” …

The teams also developed a battle plan if Trump wins Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. The Biden campaign would demand a recount based on accusations of “voter suppression”. In that scenario, “governors in two of the three (Wisconsin and Michigan) sent separate slates of electors to counter those sent by the state legislature“.

If that happens, the plotters predict, it would prompt “a breakdown in the joint session of Congress by getting the House of Representatives to agree to award the presidency to Biden based on the alternative pro-Biden submissions sent by pro-Biden governors.” January 20, 2021 would arrive with no clear winner, raising the specter of military action.

Only one scenario allows for a Biden loss, but any concession would involve a constitutional shakedown. The Biden campaign wouldn’t admit defeat until it “negotiated hard for permanent structural reforms” including long-desired Democratic Party goals such as eliminating the Electoral College and approving D.C. statehood.

Keep in mind, these are the same folks who routinely accuse the president of violating “constitutional norms”, and therein lies the gist: since Trump allegedly shreds the Constitution and rule of law, they argue without evidence, then his foes are justified in doing the same. …

The Biden team may encourage California, Washington, and Oregon to secede and form a new country—Cascadia—unless Congressional Republicans agree to “structural reforms to fix our democratic system” proposed by President Obama.

Romney plays a starring role in one anecdote; while Trump disputes a slim Biden victory, Romney successfully convinces three Republican senators to declare Biden the victor. “As it became evident that the Biden victory would be certified, Senator [sic] Majority Leader Mitch McConnell privately signaled to several Republicans they could support Romney’s cross-the-aisle effort, recognizing that moderate Republicans are more likely to prevail in 2022.”

Trump’s woes, however, won’t be over after Biden replaces him in the Oval Office. TIP organizers will push to have the president and members of his administration charged with unspecified crimes.

Some observers have compared the Transition Integrity Project’s operation to a “color revolution,” a coup-like strategy the United States uses in other countries to foment civil unrest and oust hostile foreign leaders. (Revolver News has a few excellent pieces detailing the comparison and the players involved.)

But what’s most alarming about TIP’s plan is the deep pockets behind it. All of this could be written off as the grudge fantasies of political activists still mad about 2016 except it is backed by some of the wealthiest people in the world. … including George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Rupert Murdoch family.

On further consideration we wonder: is more and worse violent chaos unavoidable even if Donald Trump wins in a landslide?

After all, it is not the will of the people that matters to these planners of chaos.

Only their will to power matters to them.

The arbiters of truth 264

From now on, when you write news on Facebook, it will be judged by certain people – specially talented, it is implied, in being totally uninfluenced by their own likes and dislikes – and if they reject it as untrue, it will be …

Deleted? Banned? Demoted? Obscured?

Discredited, anyway.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Inc. is inching closer to fact-checking the news on its platform, a role that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shunned a month ago, by rolling out steps to weed out “the worst of the worst”, the social media platform said on Thursday.

It has inched all the way. It is commissioning fact-checking.

Facebook said it has identified several markers of sites that consistently peddle fake news, and it will demote posts from those sites in people’s news feeds.

It is also outsourcing the delicate task of determining whether individual stories are true or false to a few external organizations and tweaking its news feed algorithm based on their rulings. It is unusual for Facebook to entrust outsiders with this much power to influence the way posts are played in the news feed, the central stream of information that is customized for each user by Facebook’s algorithm. …

Mr. Zuckerberg initially dismissed concerns over fake news, but later backed away from that stance. Still he remains wary of Facebook becoming the “arbiters of truth” … 

By drafting the help of a network of fact-checking groups affiliated with the Poynter Institute, a journalism nonprofit based in St. Petersburg, Fla., Facebook is seeking to keep the task at arm’s length. …

(More about Poynter below.)

The fact-checking organizations — Snopes.com, PolitiFact, ABC News, Factcheck.org and the Associated Press — will sift through the flagged stories to determine if they are fake. It will be up to those organizations to determine whether or not to fact-check them. …

Facebook’s partnerships immediately sparked questions among users and conservatives on the neutrality of the fact checkers themselves.

“Fact checkers all seem to be from the left,” said a Twitter message from the account of Republican strategist Evan Siegfried. “Not good for conservatives.”

If a fact checker determines articles are untrue, those stories will appear lower in Facebook’s news feed and publishers can’t promote them with Facebook ads, the company said. The links will also carry a warning label to indicate that their accuracy is in dispute.

ABC news and the Associated Press (AP) as arbiters of truthful reporting? Orwell, your Ministry of Truth exists, and rules over us! Both are notoriously left-biased. (Read about ABC’s bias here. As for AP – Google “Associated Press misreporting” and see instantly on page one just some of the topics they’ve lied about.)

But wait! Worse is to come.

Aaron Klein writes at Breitbart:

The organization partnered with Facebook to help determine whether a certain story is “disputed” is financed by billionaire George Soros and a slew of other left-wing funders.

The partnering organization is Poynter. It has set up a new subsidiary for this task, the International Fact-Checking Network, and yes, it is funded by George Soros, the ideal man to head Orwell’s Ministry of Truth!

The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook yesterday announced it will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles.

Facebook says that if the “fact checking organizations” determine that a certain story is fake, it will get flagged as disputed and, according to the Facebook announcement, “there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed”.

IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. A cursory search of the Poynter Institute website finds that Poynter’s IFCN is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Poynter’s IFCN is also funded by the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Omidyar Network has partnered with the [Orwellian-named] Open Society on numerous projects and it has given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides is one of the largest donors to left-wing causes in the U.S.

Another significant Poynter Institute donor is the Craig Newmark Foundation, the charitable organization established by Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark. On Monday, just days before the announcement of the Facebook partnership, Poynter issued a press release revealing that Newmark donated $1 million to the group to fund a faculty chair in journalism ethics.

States the press release:

The gift will support a five-year program at Poynter that focuses on verification, fact-checking and accountability in journalism. It’s the largest donation Poynter’s ever received from an individual foundation.

The Newmark Chair will expand on Poynter’s teaching in journalism ethics and develop certification programs for journalists that commit to ethical decision-making practices. The faculty member will also organize an annual conference on ethics issues at Poynter and be a regular contributor to Poynter.org.

Newmark funds scores of liberal groups also financed by Soros, including the Sierra Club, the New America Foundation, and the Sunlight Foundation.

Newmark also finances the investigative journalism group called the Center for Public Integrity, where he serves on the board.  Soros’s Open Society is another Public Integrity donor.

Soros has earned his megafortune in part by short selling currencies and causing economic crises. He is credited with breaking the pound on September 16, 1992 in a day that became known in Britain as “Black Wednesday.” He reportedly made $1.2 billion from that crisis.  In 2002, he was convicted for insider trading.

And that’s the least of his offenses. See the very long list of the organizations through which he works his evil will, and read what their principles and purposes are.

Poynter, meanwhile, has hosted controversial journalism programs in the past, including one that was accused of downplaying the threat of global Islamic terrorism. FoxNews.com reported the course suggested reporters “keep the death toll from Islamic terrorism in ‘context’ by comparing that toll to the number of people killed every year by malaria, HIV/AIDS and other factors”.

It is typical of the Left to compare terrorism to accidents and diseases, as though no moral decision is involved in the committing of random murder. This amounts to a condoning of terrorism, which positively encourages it.

The course taught reporters that the term “jihad” means internal struggle, and it discussed what it claimed was the issue of “right-wing activists” attempting to link American Muslims to terrorism.

As examples of fact-checking, the propagation of such blatant lies does not inspire confidence.

The section includes the good-journalism tip that reporters should check to see if experts they’re interviewing “have a bias or a stake in the story you are covering.” But then it only cites examples of anti-Muslim groups.

The course in Islam, Fox News reported, was supported by a group calling itself the Social Science Research Council, which has received funding from Soros-financed groups.

In response to the report, the Poynter Institute explained that it created the course “as a tool for journalists who want to be accurate in educating their audience about the religion and culture of Islam, Muslim communities in the U.S., and the distinctions between Islam as a political movement and the radical philosophies that inspire militant Islamists”. 

As there is NO distinction to be drawn between “Islam as a political movement and the radical philosophies that inspire militant Islamists”, those journalists who long to achieve strict accuracy will be teaching a lie from the get-go.    

“We believe there is a need to better understand the complexities of Muslim societies and the online course offered by Poynter and Washington State University is a vital resource toward that end,” Poynter added.

The values underpinning the course are truth, accuracy, independence, fairness, minimizing harm and context — the core journalistic values on which we build all our teaching here at Poynter.”

No one should be surprised at Poynter’s capacity for self-deception. It is what makes Leftism possible.

What of the other “fact-checkers”  on which Facebook will rely?

Poynter owns the Tampa Bay Times, and the Tampa Bay Times owns Politifact,

Politifact declares about itself:

PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times and its partner news organizations to help you find the truth in American politics. …

Control of the newspaper and its operations, however, lies with a single executive. Upon retirement, that leader picks a successor. …

We received a grant from the Democracy Fund that has assisted us in expanding to new states. …

For our PunditFact project — which fact-checks talking heads and opinion leaders – we have received grants from the Ford Foundation and the Democracy Fund. Seed money for the project was provided by craigconnects. …

The Democracy Fund is administered by the iniquitous United Nations. The Ford Foundation funds such causes as Black Live Matter.

 When it comes to the question of “Who is PolitiFact?” or “Who pays for PolitiFact?”, we can assure you that no one is behind the scenes telling us what to write for someone else’s benefit. We are an independent, nonpartisan news organization. We are not beholden to any government, political party or corporate interest. We are proud to be able to say that we are independent journalists. …

Sorry, but we find that really, really hard to believe.

Then there is Snopes.com. It too is heavily left leaning(Read about it here and here.)

And what of Factcheck.org?

We quote from (conservative) Free Republic, which investigated it:

The “Truthfulness” website called FactCheck.org is itself decidedly BIASED toward the LEFT …

Among several proofs of this assertion, it cites this:

The sponsoring agency behind FastCheck.org, is itself supported by the same foundation, the ANNENBERG FOUNDATION, that Bill Ayers secured the 49.2 million dollars from to create the Chicago ANNENBERG Challenge “philanthropic” organization in which Barack Obama was the founding Chairman of the Board for and Ayers served as the grant writer of and co-Chair of for its two operating arms.

That’s Bill Ayers the terrorist. Read here how he and Barack Obama tried to “push radicalism in schools” through the Annenberg Challenge.

Free Republic concludes its report on Factcheck.com with a question:

Does the LEFT have no conscience at all?

Answer: Absolutely none.

Has all this been revealed to Mark Zuckerberg? Does he not know or not care?

Facebook is a global platform. With this ploy, the lying Left has brought off a power-grab of immeasurable proportions. From now on it will be the arbiter of truth, all over the world.

And for the Left, “truth” equals political correctness.

But does anyone over there on the Left know what you stand for now? Where you’re going, or why?