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Who Won the Taiwan War Games?

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Who Won the Taiwan War Games?

After 19 hours in Taiwan, the speaker flew to South Korea, where her reception was described as “cool.” President Yoon Suk Yeol, though at home in Seoul when Pelosi arrived, did not meet with her, but instead held a 40-minute phone conversation. South Korea, like its neighbors, is anxious not to offend China.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defied White House signals that she not stop in Taiwan on her valedictory tour of Asian capitals, she ignited the worst diplomatic U.S.-China row in decades.

And how did last week’s collision turn out for the United States?

Writes The New York Times:

Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan began with her “plane departing from Kuala Lumpur and heading southeast toward the Indonesian part of Borneo, then turning north to fly along the eastern part of the Philippines. A more direct — and shorter — route would have been to fly northeast in a direct route over the South China Sea to Taiwan.”

Pelosi’s avoidance of the South China Sea might have something to do with China’s claim to 90% of it and China’s control of islets in that sea that Beijing has converted into air, missile and naval bases.

After 19 hours in Taiwan, the speaker flew to South Korea, where her reception was described as “cool.” President Yoon Suk Yeol, though at home in Seoul when Pelosi arrived, did not meet with her, but instead held a 40-minute phone conversation.

South Korea, like its neighbors, is anxious not to offend China.

Consider this anomaly here:

South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand all rely on the United States as their No. 1 ally in defending them against China, but all boast of China as their No. 1 trading partner.

How did Beijing react to Pelosi’s 19 hours in Taiwan?

With warplanes, warships and ballistic missiles, China conducted live-fire exercises from Thursday noon to Sunday noon, at six sites surrounding Taiwan. One Chinese missile flew over Taiwan. Five landed in the exclusive economic zone of Japan.

The effect of these live firings at and around Taiwan was that of a naval quarantine or blockade. Ships and planes of other nations avoided air corridors and waters being targeted by Chinese forces.

China also announced diplomatic and economic sanctions against the U.S. and Taiwan, canceling talks with Washington on climate change and military relations.

Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was the triggering event that ignited the Chinese war games against Taiwan. But these air, naval and missile exercises were not planned in a day. They appear to have been prepared as a dress rehearsal for how China intends to go about bringing Taiwan home to the motherland, when President Xi Jinping decides the time is right.

Pelosi spent the rest of her trip insisting that her visit represented no change in U.S. policy on Taiwan.

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, Pelosi reiterated, “Our representation here is not about changing the status quo,” adding that Beijing is “probably using our visit as an excuse.”

As the live firing went on for 72 hours, the White House echoed Pelosi that the U.S. recognizes Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is a “part of China” and does not contest that claim. Nor have we any intention of shifting U.S. policy on Taiwan as it has been pursued since Jimmy Carter broke U.S. diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979.

Where was the U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, then on Asian assignment during all this? Cruising in the Philippine Sea, not the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait or East China Sea, all claimed by Beijing.

What was the message sent and the message received from the war games with which China responded to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan?

From Beijing, the message sent to the U.S. was clear.

China regards Taiwan as its detached province. It will confront any power, including the United States, that is perceived to be challenging that political reality. It will respond to any Taiwanese move to establish its independence of Beijing as a casus belli, a justification for war.

The White House did not move any planes, ships or missiles to counter the Chinese live-fire exercises and, indeed, reassured Beijing repeatedly that Pelosi’s visit did not represent any change in U.S. policy.

It is hard to see how Asia’s free and democratic nations and U.S. allies Japan, South Korea and Australia could not have taken away the conclusion that bristling Chinese aggressiveness had just been met by American passivity. Hawkish members of the Senate like Lindsey Graham appear to believe that.

Consider the path Beijing has lately pursued:

It has attacked and captured border lands in the Himalayas from India, claimed virtually the entire South China Sea, fortified half a dozen isles in that sea, claimed the Taiwan Strait as territorial waters, the transit of which by U.S. and allied warships requires China’s permission, claimed Taiwan as part of China, as well as the nearby Senkaku Islands held by Japan.

Now it has sent military aircraft and warships across the Taiwan Strait into and over the waters surrounding Taiwan and test-fired missiles and rockets to reenforce its claim to the island.

When 21st-century China stakes a claim to something in Asia, it backs up its claim with action. The trend is unmistakable and points to a future confrontation over Taiwan.

Kevin MacDonald Discussion of Maurice Samuel’s “You Gentiles” with The Right Stuff

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https://therightstuff.biz/2022/07/27/tds923/

China: Pelosi Trip to Taiwan a Provocation

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China: Pelosi Trip to Taiwan a Provocation

If Pelosi postpones or cancels the visit, it will be seen as a U.S. climb-down in the face of Chinese indignation and protest, and an affront to our friends in Taiwan. … Either way, relations between our countries will likely suffer, and perhaps seriously, if the Chinese opt for a military response to a Pelosi visit.

When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi added to the itinerary of a valedictory trip through Asia the island of Taiwan, she could not have been oblivious to the reaction she would produce in a stunned Beijing.

Thus, when the Financial Times revealed that the speaker would be visiting Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province, an enraged Beijing took the Pelosi visit to be a deliberate U.S. provocation.

Beijing’s reaction appears authentic and understandable.

“If the U.S. insists on going its own way, China will take firm and forceful measures to firmly safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” a Chinese spokesman told reporters in Beijing. “The U.S. must bear all the consequence of the visit.”

Privately, Beijing is said to be issuing more pointed and serious warnings, which involve military action.

Pelosi apparently did not coordinate or clear the visit to Taiwan with the White House or Defense Department. Wednesday, President Joe Biden told reporters: “The military thinks it’s not a good idea right now” for Pelosi to travel to Taiwan.

So where do we stand?

China is promising serious retaliation if the highest U.S. official since Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997 flies to Taiwan.

The Biden administration is putting out word that it does not believe that a Pelosi visit to Taiwan is a wise move, when the Chinese Communist Party is on the eve of a conference to decide on a third five-year term for President Xi Jinping.

If Pelosi postpones or cancels the visit, it will be seen as a U.S. climb-down in the face of Chinese indignation and protest, and an affront to our friends in Taiwan.

Around the Asia-Pacific rim, the word will be, “The Americans, faced with China’s firmness, backed down.”

But if the visit goes forward, China is publicly committed to respond. Either way, relations between our countries will likely suffer, and perhaps seriously, if the Chinese opt for a military response to a Pelosi visit.

However this collision plays out, the U.S. is paying the price for having adopted, decades ago, a policy of building up China in the hope and expectation that Beijing would evolve into a benign and friendly rival and competitor of the United States.

Granted most-favored-nation trade status by the U.S., which also ushered it into the World Trade Organization, China has moved, since the turn of the century, from a country with an economy smaller than Italy’s into a manufacturing monolith that is the rival of the United States.

Though China’s navy is less powerful than the U.S. Navy, it is now larger in the number of ships it deploys.

Strategically, China has moved to claim 90% of the South China Sea, the Paracel and Spratly island chains, and most of the rocks and reefs in the territorial waters of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan. Some of these rocks and reefs have been converted by China into fortified air and naval bases.

China not only claims Taiwan, and the Taiwan Strait as territorial waters; it claims the Senkaku Islands, occupied and claimed by Japan.

In 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, in Peking, seemed to concede China’s claim to Taiwan in the Shanghai Communique that came out of that historic summit:

The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.

With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter broke relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan, recognized Communist China and abrogated the mutual security treaty with Taipei dating to 1954.

For the last three decades, the importation of Chinese-made goods by the United States and the transfer of U.S. manufacturing to China to take advantage of the low wages and productive labor force have led to many trillions of dollars in successive China trade surpluses with us and the rapid emergence of China as an Asian superpower.

Lately, Beijing’s military has made repeated incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and has had a growing number of encounters with the U.S. Navy and Air Force planes in the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, Biden has said the U.S. will fight to defend our ally, the Philippines, if a collision occurs in the South China Sea. We will fight to defend the Senkakus alongside our ally Japan. And, though his staff has sought to walk it back, Biden has said we will fight to defend Taiwan.

A U.S.-China collision somewhere in the Western Pacific appears inevitable. The only questions are when and where.

 

What Makes Biden So Pugnacious?

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When Biden left for the day, Corn Pop was waiting for him, with three gang members, and holding a straight razor… Whatever the reality of that event, 60 years ago, Biden has issued, in his 18 months in office, a remarkable number of warnings and threats as to what he would do as commander in chief if challenged, thereby putting his own and his country’s credibility on the line.

That friendly fist bump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman might not have been such a defining moment — had Biden not first set himself up.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden said that when he encounters the prince, he would treat him like the “pariah” he was for having authorized the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

As for Biden’s depiction of how he confronted MBS behind closed doors, the Saudis dispute his rendition, and many of his own countrymen disbelieve Biden.

Why? Because Joe Biden has a history of painting himself as heroic in personal encounters where few contemporaries recall him that way.

The classic is the story Biden has often told of confronting, as a pool security guard in a Black neighborhood, a gang leader named Corn Pop, whom Biden ordered out of the pool for breaking the rules.

When Biden left for the day, Corn Pop was waiting for him, with three gang members, and holding a straight razor. Biden, holding a six-foot length of chain, he says, faced him down, and Corn Pop backed off.

Whatever the reality of that event, 60 years ago, Biden has issued, in his 18 months in office, a remarkable number of warnings and threats as to what he would do as commander in chief if challenged, thereby putting his own and his country’s credibility on the line.

Asked, before his trip to the Middle East, if he would use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Biden replied, “If that was the last resort, yes.”

During the trip, the U.S. and Israel signed a joint pledge to deny nuclear arms to Iran. We are now committed.

Given that the U.S. has fought in five wars in the Middle East in this century — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen — one would think this country would be wary of committing itself to a new war with one of the largest powers in the region.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin built up forces outside Ukraine and asked repeatedly for assurances that Ukraine would not be brought into NATO, an alliance aimed at Russia, the Biden administration refused.

The February invasion followed, and among Biden’s subsequent threats, his call for the removal of Putin was virtually declared a war aim.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” thundered Biden in Poland, a declaration that was hastily walked back by White House staff.

In addition to the weaponry we were shipping to Ukraine — long-range artillery and rockets — Biden announced at the NATO summit in Madrid that the U.S. would be strengthening its military presence in Europe.

The permanent headquarters of the U.S. Army’s V Corps is to be moved to Poland. Two additional F-35 fighter jet squadrons are to be moved to the U.K. More air defense capabilities are to be moved into Germany and Italy. Rotational deployments of U.S. troops to the Baltic region are to be increased. U.S. troops are to be moved into Romania.

U.S. forces in Europe are to be increased from about 60,000 to 100,000, and Biden has vowed that Putin’s invasion “will not end with a Russian defeat of Ukraine in Ukraine.”

But how Biden guarantees that the Russian invasion will be rolled back, if Putin rolls up the Donbas, is unexplained.

Since the Russia-Ukraine war began, Biden has also given Article 5 war guarantees to Sweden and Finland by promising to bring them into NATO.

From the Arctic to the Black Sea and from Iceland to Estonia, there are now 30 European nations we are obligated to defend.

In 2021, Biden indicated that the U.S.-Philippines mutual security treaty dating to the 1950s meant the U.S. would come to Manila’s defense should it attempt to reclaim rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, also claimed and now occupied by Chinese military forces.

The U.S. war guarantees in our treaty with Japan extend to the Senkaku Islands, also claimed by China, according to the Biden White House.

In May, in Tokyo, Biden gave a flat “yes” to a reporter’s question as to whether he is willing to “get involved militarily to defend Taiwan.”

“That’s the commitment we made,” the president said.

Not so. The U.S. scrapped its formal commitment to defend Taiwan in 1979, replacing a treaty of alliance with the Taiwan Relations Act, which obligates the U.S. to help equip Taiwan to defend itself.

Again, White House staff sought to walk back Biden’s declaration that we would fight for Taiwan, as U.S. policy since Richard Nixon’s trip to Beijing is that Taiwan “is a part of China.”

We have written dozens of blank checks to nations not only in Europe but also in the Middle East and Asia to come and fight to defend their borders.

Yet, the border most critical to us, the U.S.-Mexican border, is being overrun by a quarter of a million migrants every month, with the worst of them bringing in the fentanyl that killed 100,000 of America’s young last year.

And bellicose Joe has done next to nothing about it.

“Ohio Man” Rapes 10-Year-old

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“Ohio Man” Rapes 10-Year-old

I, for one, am tickled pink that our ruling class has finally come out against child rape. This is something new. For several decades now, the position of government officials, both political parties, think tanks, the Bush family, district attorneys and the entire media has been: We’re going to foist primitive, peasant cultures on America and then lie to the public about how this is changing our country.

We recently found out about one big way that third-world immigrants are enriching us. Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the media began talking nonstop about a “10-year-old rape victim” who couldn’t get an abortion in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana. The “10-year-old rape victim” was discussed on a loop on MSNBC and even made it into a speech by President Joe Biden.

But then, a bunch of spoilsports started questioning whether “10-year-old rape victim” existed. The attorney general of Ohio said on July 12 he had no evidence of a 10-year-old rape victim, despite the reporting of such a crime being mandatory.

With their backs against the wall, the pro-abortion crowd broke longstanding strictures against mentioning the rapey-ness of our “New Americans” by producing the rapist: Gerson Fuentes, 27, an illegal alien from Guatemala.

Oh, now I see.

The abortion ladies thought they could get away with revealing the child rape victim, while refusing to reveal the child rape perpetrator. When that failed, they wantonly defied the rest of their coalition and told the truth about one of the Democrats’ pets, an illegal immigrant.

The crime is particularly vile — CHECK!

The raping had been going on for some time — CHECK!

The mother defended her daughter’s rapist — CHECK!

The rapist is shocked that anyone thinks he did anything wrong — CHECK!

Luckily, I am Johnny on the Spot when it comes to immigrant child-rapists, having included nearly 100 such cases in my book Adios, America! — as well as the sensational, flood-the-zone news coverage the U.S. media devote to criminal immigrants. (Sarcasm.)

As far as I know, there’s only one group in the country trying to keep a running tally of immigrant child rapes: North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (NCFire.info). Here’s NCFire’s list of illegal immigrant child rapists in North Carolina, so far this year:

2022 Monthly Child Rapes by Illegal Aliens:

6. June 2022: 20 illegal aliens arrested for 42 child rape/child sexual assault charges

5. May 2022: 18 illegal aliens arrested for 42 child rape/child sexual assault charges

4. April 2022: 19 illegal aliens arrested for 72 child rape/child sexual assault charges

2. February 2022: 27 illegal aliens arrested for 84 child rape/child sexual assault charges

1. January 2022: 18 illegal aliens arrested for 96 child rape/child sexual assault charges

Again, that’s only in a single state. And only when the immigrant is illegal.

WHY DOESN’T THE PUBLIC KNOW ABOUT THIS?

Unfortunately, our media are too busy reporting on apocryphal gang rapes by the Duke lacrosse team and “frat boys” at the University of Virginia to bother mentioning the epidemic of child rape by immigrants from peasant cultures pouring into our country by the millions.

How far into the stories about UVA and Duke did you have to read to find out that the (falsely) accused rapists were “privileged white men”?

By contrast, whenever the media deign to mention an immigrant rapist, the story will appear in — at most — one local newspaper. Further, both the heinous nature of the crime and the immigration status of the rapist will be hidden. (How about a news report on the Duke lacrosse case, appearing exclusively in the local paper at the bottom of page A-18, titled, “Area Men Arrested.”)

In 2013, an illegal alien from Guatemala, German Rolando Vicente-Sapon, was convicted of kidnapping his 16-year-old cousin, transporting her to the U.S. (also illegally), and holding her as his sex slave for years.

Only one newspaper in the country reported the story: the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Quiz: Was the headline —

“Illegal Alien sentenced for Incest, Child Rape, Kidnapping and Sex Slavery,” OR

“Man Guilty in Case of Human Smuggling”?

I think you know the answer.

There’s no question that the national media would never have breathed a word about the Fuentes case — but for the doubters. So a big shoutout to the feminists for putting abortion-on-demand above open borders. If only politicians cared as much about our country as pro-choicers do about abortion.

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Is a US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?

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Is a US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?

If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons. … To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.

At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland?

If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki’s defense and fight Russia on Finland’s side.

What does Finland’s membership in NATO mean for America?

If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.

No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment — to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.

To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.

Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break Joseph Stalin’s blockade of Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to save the Hungarian freedom fighters being run down by Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.

Lyndon B. Johnson did nothing to assist the Czech patriots crushed by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968. When Lech Walesa’s Solidarity was smashed on Moscow’s order in Poland in 1981, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent Xerox machines.

While the U.S. issued annual declarations of support during the Cold War for the “captive nations” of Central and Eastern Europe, the liberation of these nations from Soviet control was never deemed so vital to the West as to justify a war with the USSR.

Indeed, in the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, which had begun in 1949 with 12 member nations, added only four more — Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany.

Yet, with the invitation to Sweden and Finland to join as the 31st and 32nd nations to receive an Article 5 war guarantee, NATO will have doubled its membership since what was thought — certainly by the Russians — to have been the end of the Cold War.

All the nations once part of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact — East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria — are now members of a U.S.-led NATO — directed against Russia.

Three former republics of the USSR — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are now also members of NATO, a military alliance formed to corral and contain the nation to which they had belonged during the Cold War.

Lithuania, with 2% of Russia’s population, has just declared a partial blockade of goods moving across its territory to Kaliningrad, Russia’s enclave on the Baltic Sea.

To Putin’s protest, Vilnius has reminded Moscow that Lithuania is a member of NATO.

It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.

In 1914, the Kaiser’s Germany gave its Austrian ally a “blank check” to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna cashed the Kaiser’s check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914–1918 was on.

In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.

Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.

And Poland? At Yalta in 1945, Winston Churchill agreed that a Soviet-occupied Poland should remain in Stalin’s custody.

Putin is a Russian nationalist who regards the breakup of the USSR as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, but he is not alone responsible for the wretched relations between our countries.

We Americans have played a leading role in what is shaping up as a Second Cold War, more dangerous than the first.

Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.

In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.

In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked. If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?

Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation, they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.

Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as “saber-rattling”?

Breaking: Trump Was Listening to People as Crazy as Democrats!

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BREAKING: TRUMP WAS LISTENING TO PEOPLE AS CRAZY AS DEMOCRATS!

Jan. 6 hearings, Day 900: Nothing new.

Apparently, White House counsel Pat Cipillone — whom we’ve been hearing was the Rosetta stone to the whole case against Trump — didn’t back up the sainted White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

Among the shocking claims Hutchinson made two weeks ago was this alleged exchange between her boss, chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Cipollone:

Cipollone: “The rioters have gotten into the Capitol, Mark. We need to go see the president now.”

Meadows: “He doesn’t want to do anything”

Cipollone: “Something needs to be done, or somebody is going to die and this is going to be on your effing hands. They’re literally calling for the VP to be effing hung.”

Meadows: “You heard him, Pat, he thinks Mike deserves it.”

Cipollone: “Effing crazy.”

CIPOLLONE MUST TESTIFY! CIPOLLONE MUST TESTIFY!

Well, Cipollone testified last Friday, and the big revelation is: He thought Trump should accept the results of the election.

Yeah, so did everyone else within five miles of the White House — except Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and the former Overstock.com CEO, Patrick Byrne.

Yes, it’s embarrassing that Trump had a Dec. 18 meeting with these nuts, during which he announced he was going to make Powell “special counsel” to investigate election theft.

Name a day of the Trump presidency that he didn’t say something stupid. Name a day since the election that you didn’t know Trump was listening to Powell, Flynn and the Overstock guy.

I don’t know where liberals get off rolling their eyes at Powell’s wacky theories about the election. As I understand it, she claims voting machines were rigged by Iran, China and maybe Hugo Chavez, among other totally believable, not-at-all-crazy claims.

Hey, anybody remember the Diebold voting machine conspiracy theory?

According to serious, prominent, respected Democrats, the Diebold company rigged Ohio’s voting machines in 2004 to flip votes from Kerry to Bush. Without Ohio, Bush would have lost the election.

Among the places the Diebold conspiracy theory was strenuously argued were:

An 8,000-word article by Michael Shnayerson in the April 2004 issue of Vanity Fair;

A 2,800-word article by Christopher Hitchens in the March 2005 Vanity Fair;

An “expose” by Bobby Kennedy Jr. in the June 15, 2006, Rolling Stone magazine.

The gist of it, to the extent any conspiracy theory can be boiled down to a “gist,” is that the CEO of Diebold, which provided some of Ohio’s voting machines, was a Bush supporter. Also, one of the computer software engineers who tested the software “had given $25,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2000.”

The Diebold conspiracy theory was so idiotic, it was debunked in Salon magazine, of all places. And that’s a publication with articles about anal sex and pollution on Mars.

Yet and still, during the official count of the 2004 Electoral College vote, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, objected to the reading of Ohio’s votes, requiring both houses to return to their respective chambers and debate the Ohio results for two hours before returning to finish the tally.

Thirty-one Democrats in the House objected to the counting of Ohio’s votes; one member of the Senate objected. (Guess who?)

There was even a book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? by Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss. (Spoiler alert: You’re damn right it was stolen!) Their proof was that the exit polls showed Kerry ahead, so to hell with actual results on Election Day.

The real cheating in the 2020 election — and every other election in recent memory — wasn’t that Iran, China or Chavez were manipulating our voting machines. It wasn’t the ballot harvesting allegedly exposed in Dinesh D’Souza’s movie, 2,000 Mules. It was what liberals were doing right in front of our faces.

Democrats have what are known as “unmotivated voters.” As such, they need battalions of “Get Out the Vote” activists to track down the bored and the lazy. (Yes, the same marginalized people whom liberals claim are having their lifelong dreams of voting dashed by GOP “voter suppression” schemes can’t be bothered to get out of bed on Election Day.)

Over the years, Democrats have lured their voters to the polls with a free ride, a box lunch and walking-around money — even a gurney, if that’s what it takes. Volunteers give the voters detailed, childlike instructions on exactly how to fill out their ballots. Luckily, unionized government workers have plenty of time on their hands to “organize” voters.

Without these sorts of military-style operations, the day after the election, Democrats will find out half their voters overslept and forgot to vote.

Consequently, COVID was like manna from heaven for the left. It provided the perfect excuse to demand even more time for volunteers to round up the uninterested. No-excuse absentee ballots, mail-in ballots, drop boxes, months of early voting — all of it: Advantage Democrats.

Until Republicans stop being pushovers and shut down all mail-in balloting, all early voting, all drop boxes, and pass a federal law requiring ONE DAY, a NATIONAL HOLIDAY, to vote (which is fully within Congress’ constitutional authority), Democrats have a gigantic, unfair advantage. That’s not cheating. It’s being smarter than Mitch McConnell.

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