Disband the FBI

Of the four men on trial for plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, two were found not guilty on all counts.  The remaining two resulted in a hung jury.  Looking back, it does seem unusual that a major bust by the FBI should happen the month before the presidential election and that it should involve a Democratic governor in an important battleground state.  In the wake of the arrests and the massive reporting that followed, Whitmer blamed Trump and Trump blamed Whitmer for locking down the state.  Soon after, Trump lost Michigan and the election.

After the election, FBI shenanigans were exposed.  A dozen FBI agents and/or informants were involved in the plot, 'observing' every facet of the growing plot.  Those arrested claimed that much of the push toward the plot came from the FBI informants and agents.  That two of the men were found not guilty leads one to think that probably was the case.  I would generally dismiss such conspiracy theories about the FBI, but two of the men charged were found not guilty.  12 jurors voted unanimously against the government case.  Sure, I could see a hung jury with one hold out juror, but a unanimous vote against seems unthinkable.  What evidence did the jurors see that convinced them there was nothing there?  When one considers the role of the FBI in the Russian Collusion Hoax, it becomes all that more believable that agents could perpetrate something like this.

I used to think very highly of the FBI.  As a kid, I used to watch the TV series with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.  I was a big fan of the X-Files, which took the FBI to strange places.  Fringe did much the same.  Now, the FBI always seems to be political.  I'm all for infiltrating violent or would-be violent groups, but where are the big arrests of BLM and Antifa?  Director Comey sent memos to someone outside of government in order to trigger a special counsel investigation against Trump.  His successor, Andrew McCabe was fired for leaking information to the media.  Agent Peter Strzok was fired as well.  FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was fired for falsifying a FISA document to spy on a Trump campaign advisor.  All these men were deeply involved in the Russian Collusion story, which has since been shown to be false.  The FBI is no longer an unbiased law enforcement agency.  As many black Americans don't believe the testimony of any police officer, I am more and more inclined to doubt any testimony from the FBI, especially if the case has political implications.

Law of Averages

The Law of Averages is a weak law when applied to small numbers but becomes more reliable as the sample grows.  For instance, if 100 people flip a quarter 10 times each, you can expect about 500 heads and 500 tails.  However, if Bill flipped 10 consecutive heads while Stacy flipped 10 tails, that would not be surprising.  The more coin flips, the closer to 50-50 it should be.

In Michigan, Joe Biden had his strongest showing in Washtenaw County.  He crushed Trump, winning 72% of the vote compared to Trump's 26%.  His next best showing was Wayne County.  Biden won 68% of the votes to Trump's 30%.  As these are some of the most populous regions of the state, that explains how Biden could win despite only carrying 11 of Michigan's 83 counties.  But this leads to a question of those early morning batches:

3:50 AM, 59,215 votes were processed that were 92% for Biden.  Huh.  This is a vastly better showing than Biden had in his two strongest counties.  As noted in an earlier post, he stomped Trump with mail-in ballots by a 2 to 1 margin but this is 12 to 1.  Of course, there were 5.5 million votes cast so this is only 1% of the total.  This is like the example where Bill flipped 10 consecutive heads.  Just happened to lean very Biden.

6:31 AM, 185,069 votes were processed that were 95.9% for Biden.  Huh.  That's over 3% of all the votes cast in the state and it is even more lopsided.  As a whole, the state went to Biden by 50.6% to Trump's 47.8%.  The bigger the sample of ballots, the more it should tend toward that ratio.  If Biden had won these two batches by 63% to 37% - still stomping Trump, Trump wins Michigan.

Food for thought.

Bonus Votes

During the effort to recount Michigan, it was revealed that some precincts reported a different number of votes than there had been voters.  Votes reported didn't equal ballots counted in the ballot box.  Oops!  Of the 3,047 precincts selected for recounting, 322 had such discrepancies.  That works out to 10.6% error rate.  Yikes, that's kind of high.  This article noted some counties that had higher error rates.  Ionia County - located between Lansing and Grand Rapids - had 24% of the precincts with a mismatch between votes counted and ballots submitted.  Of course, only 26,204 votes were cast there, accounting for maybe one half of 1% of all the votes cast in the state.  Then there was Branch County - on the Indiana border - which had 27% of the precincts mismatch. However, only 16,430 votes were cast, making it even less of a factor than Ionia.  Then we come to the worst offender: Wayne County.  A whopping 37.5% of the selected precincts reported more votes cast than there had been voters.  Of the 332 precincts with discrepancies, 248 were in Wayne County.  Therefore, 77% of the over-votes occurred in a county where Hillary won 66.8% to Trump's 29.5%, a margin of 288,934 votes.  This one county - out of 83 in the state - accounted for 16.1% of all the votes cast.  If you had to pick one county in the state where shenanigans could swing the state, Wayne County is the place.

 

So far, no articles list how many bonus votes were counted.  Did a precinct that should have had 500 votes report 501 votes or 650 votes?  Is this much ado about nothing or has major voter fraud been uncovered?  Will this be swept under the rug since the recount changed nothing and Trump has now been confirmed by the electoral college?  Whatever the case, Michigan needs to address the over-vote problem before the next election.

Democrat Postmortem

Just a week before the election, The New Yorker had an article asking why Trump was wasting his time in Michigan and Wisconsin where Hillary led by a wide margin?  Reading it today, it is humorous that the writer suggests he should be in states where he can make a difference, namely Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Nevada.  With the exception of Nevada, he won those suggested states by more than 100,000 votes each, Ohio by nearly half a million.  However, he won Michigan by 10,704 and Wisconsin by 22,748.  Sounds like campaigning in these two states just prior to the election was vital.

Was Trump a better candidate?  Meh.  Was he a better campaigner?  Absolutely!  Trump lost Wisconsin to Cruz during the primary.  After getting the nomination, he had multiple rallies in the state to attract those voters and bump up Republican turnout.  By contrast, Hillary lost Wisconsin to Bernie.  After she secured the nomination, she never campaigned in the state.  This is a state she lost to Bernie and the best she does is to send her daughter and Tim Kaine to campaign in her stead.  In the 2012 campaign, there was an exit poll asking whether Obama or Romney cared more about voters.  Obama won something like 80% to 20%.  I don't know if that question was asked this time around but Wisconsin voters had to see that Hillary was taking their votes for granted while Trump was in the state trying to make the sale.  Complacency cost the Democrats the state.  What about Michigan?  Trump won the state in the primary with a plurality of the votes.  Even so, he had multiple rallies to boost turnout and make the sale.  He was personally on the ground.  Again, Hillary lost this state to Bernie and then did nothing to secure the Bernie voters after the convention.  She was largely absent from the state though Michigan saw higher ranking surrogates, including Bill Clinton and President Obama.  In the last couple of weeks, Hillary did make some campaign stops in the state.  Complacency cost another state.

 

Hillary's frequent and extended absences from campaigning fed into rumors of her bad health.  Once that took hold, however unfair it may have been, she needed to address it by being visible.  That her actions only seemed to confirm it must surely have hurt her numbers.

 

Those who say Bernie would have been a more formidable candidate may be right.  He was far more energetic on the campaign trail, he provided more enthusiasm, and he wasn't an insider candidate.  As we know from the DNC email leaks, the primaries were rigged against him and Hillary had media insiders feeding her debate questions and providing positive press.  Though he would have lacked many of Hillary's weaknesses, he would have brought self-identified "socialist" with him.

 

In much the same way Republicans started winning the state and local elections after Obama won in 2008, the same is almost certain to happen this time around.  The Republicans are at their high water mark and will start sinking next year with governorships and in 2018 in the House.  Unless the national situation is really bad in 2018, the electoral map may see further losses in the Senate for Democrats.  That the Democrats have retained the leadership that has led them here is probably not a good sign for their future prospects.