Utah Caucus irregularities

cartoon credit: thepoliticalcarnival.net

Some Cleveland Tea Party patriots will have already seen this report, since it was linked on Drudge today, but it is very disturbing:  

UTAH CAUCUS: First hand insider report - Incompetence, Manipulation, and Ballot Stuffing!!!

Just got back from my caucus... My head is still spinning.

Check in was slow but reasonably controlled. Super-long lines. I've never seen turnout like this.

Got my credentials, but no presidential ballot. They said those would be delivered to our caucus room.

Got to my caucus room. I counted about 120 people there (no idea how many were actually registered and credentialed). 

We elected Precinct Officers, State Delegates, and County Delegates - the typical incompetence and ignorance of the rules you'd expect to see from volunteers, but all went somewhat smooth.

...Then came the Presidential Ballot. 

Someone shows up with a stack of probably 250 ballots. The precinct chair splits them up, and starts handing stacks of them out and tells people "take one and pass it down". 

No checking credentials, IDs, NOTHING.

I'm sitting at the end of a row and people start handing me stacks of extras. I literally had over 50 ballots in my hand. 

We were told to mark our vote and place our ballot in a tin can. They then asked for a volunteer to hold the can. At this point, most people filed out the door. 

I cast ONE vote, then stuck around to see what would happen with the votes. 

About 15 minutes later, with only about 10 or so people milling around, someone walks in the room with an envelopes STUFFED full of "absentee" ballots - some envelopes having 2-5+ ballots. 

I raised a question and said, "isn't there an absentee process already in place? Didn't people have to register for that last week?" and was told "Oh no, this is completely normal". 

As I've mentioned in other threads, I was in Party leadership for 6 years and no, this is absolutely not normal.

I then asked if I could observe the vote count, and I was told my observations were not needed and to leave the area while the ballots were being counted. 

I left the room (things were already a complete Charlie Foxtrot at this point) and wandered over to my friends precinct caucus to see if it was just as much a cluster. 

His caucus was just getting to the presidential ballot, and as I walked in the door I was handed ANOTHER BALLOT. 

Again, no credential check, no ID check, NOTHING.

No, I didn't vote again... 

I went back to my precinct and they had the results: 

   74% Cruz

   14% Trump

   11% Kasich

Now just imagine this kind of outright incompetence/manipulation happening in 2000 precincts across the state.

As I left the building, I started overhearing results coming back from other precincts... Overwhelmingly numbers for Cruz... Like 70-90% or more. (In one precinct Cruz got around 100, Trump had 2, Kasich 0).

Bottom line... They basically are going to post whatever the hell numbers they want. 

There were no apparent controls, no credential checks, no ID checks, and ballots being handed around like napkins. 

UTAH RESULTS ARE A COMPLETE SHAM.

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Cruz news

artwork credit: tulsaworld.com   

Lots of Tea Party people liked Ted Cruz’s filibuster to oppose Obamacare. Remember when he read Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham? 

But more recently, there has been some unnerving news about Ted Cruz. It’s bad enough that Glenn Beck seems to have gone off the rails with extreme statements and behavior, but now he is claiming that Cruz is the anointed priest, the “Fulfillment of Mormon Prophecy.”

Gateway Pundit has the video of Beck claiming that “This is the Priesthood Rising!”

Earlier reports described Cruz’s “dominionist” father Rafael Cruz who “indicated that his son was among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as “kings” to take control of all sectors of society, an agenda commonly referred to as the “Seven Mountains” mandate, and “bring the spoils of war to the priests”, thus helping to bring about a prophesied “great transfer of wealth”, from the “wicked” to righteous gentile believers. The YouTube video is here (h/t Conservative Treehouse).

Conservative Treehouse (a pro-Trump blogger) discusses the widely held perception that Cruz is a Washington “outsider,” when in fact that elaborate position masks the fact that he is a classic political “insider” and part of the GOPe (GOP elite) network – and has been all along. 

This blog previously posted why there are problems with Cruz’s eligibility as a natural born citizen.

This is all scary stuff, even if Cruz drops out of the race. Gov. Kasich cannot win enough delegates mathematically, so that leaves two alternative scenarios: [1] Donald Trump goes into the July convention with enough votes to meet the new rules of 1,237 delegates (he is presently at 678, Cruz at 423) as well as winning 8 states with a majority (not plurality) of delegates, or [2] the first vote is inconclusive, and the GOPe heads for the backroom to engineer the subsequent vote(s).

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George Soros and surrogates contributed $700,000 to John Kasich’s campaign

cartoon credit: comicallyincorrect.com

Over the last several months, this blogsite posted articles and links to expose the source of campaign funds for the leading candidates. Those candidates were Jeb! Bush here, Ben Carson here, Chris Christie here, Ted Cruz here, Marco Rubio here, and Donald Trump here. I did not include Governor John Kasich, because at the time, his role in the campaign appeared to be limited to siphoning off votes from top contenders. He succeeded in winning Ohio, but he is still not a serious contender, because mathematically, there are not enough delegates left in future primaries to put him over the top. But Ohio voters might still be interested in Gov. Kasich’s campaign funding sources. From Life Site News two days ago:

It took the Ohio Governor 29 tries, but he finally won his first state in the GOP primaries.   In Tuesday’s GOP primaries, Ohio’s Governor John Kasich won his home state, and one of the most important states of the general election map. 

Although it is now a mathematical impossibility for Governor Kasich to reach the necessary 1,237 votes to win the GOP primary nomination outright, the Ohio Governor has vowed to stay in the race, betting on a brokered convention along with a suspension of the convention’s rules to clinch the nomination.

As a point of explanation, Governor Kasich is not only mathematically shut out of the nomination based on delegates, but also on the fact that a candidate must win at least 8 states before he can be considered for the convention’s ballots.  This appears highly unlikely given the Governor’s 1-28 record to date.

However, there may be a different reason for Governor Kasich to remain in the race, and that can be discovered by following the trail of his donors.

A simple search of Governor Kasich’s 2016 Presidential campaign donations lists the Soros Fund Management as the sixth highest individual donor with $202,700. The seventh largest donor is the Duquesne Family Office with $150,000.  On the Super PAC side, Kasich’s New Day for America received $150,000 from Stanley Drukenmiller (who operates the Duquesne Family Office) and $200,000 from Scott Beset, who is employed by the Soros Fund Management.

Scott Bessent served as George Soros’ chief investment manager until late 2015, while Stanley Druckenmiller currently manages $2 billion of Soros’ hedge funds. Clearly, these three names, George Soros, Scott Bessent, and Stanly Drukenmiller represent George Soros just as New Day for America and Kasich for America represent Governor John Kasich.

  

In total therefore, George Soros, personally and through surrogates, has donated over $700,000 to Governor John Kasich’s campaign.

The Open Secrets pages are here and here, listing contributors. Hopefully those in other states who have yet to vote in their primaries will learn about this.  

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GOP elites to Republican voters: Drop Dead

cartoon credit: niftyatheist.com

CNBC reports (h/t Gateway Pundit):

Political parties, not voters, choose their presidential nominees, a Republican convention rules member told CNBC, a day after GOP front-runner Donald Trump rolled up more big primary victories.

“The media has created the perception that the voters choose the nomination. That’s the conflict here,” Curly Haugland, an unbound GOP delegate from North Dakota [and a Republican convention rules member], told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. He even questioned why primaries and caucuses are held.

Haugland is one of 112 Republican delegates who are not required to cast their support for any one candidate because their states and territories don’t hold primaries or caucuses.

Even with Trump’s huge projected delegate haul in four state primaries Tuesday, the odds are increasing the billionaire businessman may not ultimately get the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the GOP nomination before the convention.

This could lead to a brokered convention, in which unbound delegates, like Haugland, could play a significant swing role on the first ballot to choose a nominee.

Most delegates bound by their state’s primary or caucus results are only committed on the first ballot. If subsequent ballots are needed, virtually all of the delegates can vote any way they want, said Gary Emineth, another unbound delegate from North Dakota.

“It could introduce Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, or it could be the other candidates that have already been in the race and are now out of the race [such as] Mike Huckabee [or] Rick Santorum. All those people could eventually become candidates on the floor,” Emineth said.

And at Politico we see that (h/t HotGas)

Former Speaker John Boehner said Paul Ryan should be the Republican nominee for president if the party fails to choose a candidate on the first ballot.

"If we don't have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I'm for none of the above," Boehner said at the Futures Industry Association conference here. "They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I'm for none of the above. I'm for Paul Ryan to be our nominee."

Wading into the GOP nominating battle for the first time since leaving office last fall, Boehner said that "anybody can be nominated" at the convention in Cleveland this summer.

The GOP establishment / elite (GOPe) couldn’t breathe life into the Jeb! campaign. Then they tried to push Marco Rubio as the Jeb! surrogate and that maneuver failed. Gov. Kasich’s job in the race was to deprive any momentum candidate of the 66 Ohio winner-take-all delegates. Kasich succeeded, but otherwise it is now a two-candidate race. Neither Cruz nor Trump is acceptable to the GOPe. So we are seeing the GOPe preparing to force a brokered convention. And it's now out in the open.

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Get out and vote!

Ohio Primary today

Get out and vote!

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More photos and video from Cleveland rally for Donald Trump

Backstage at the Trump rally

Here is a Must See video of Pastor Darrell Scott of New Spirit Revival Center Ministries of Cleveland Heights introducing Mr. Trump :

Here are a few photographs courtesy Pat J Dooley:

IX Center filling up

Pledge of allegiance and Star Spangled Banner

Cleveland Tea Partiers Ralph King and photographer

A homemade sign

Mr. Trump onstage

Posters, cameras, selfies galore

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Governor John Kasich on Immigration, amnesty

Art credit: beforeitsnews.com

Illegal immigration has emerged as one of the most important issues in this primary election season. Fair (Federation for American immigration Reform) summarizes some fiscal and employment impacts of illegal immigration:

This report estimates the annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level to be about $113 billion; nearly $29 billion at the federal level and $84 billion at the state and local level. The study also estimates tax collections from illegal alien workers, both those in the above-ground economy and those in the underground economy. Those receipts do not come close to the level of expenditures and, in any case, are misleading as an offset because over time unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers would replace illegal alien workers.

Tomorrow’s Ohio primary is less than 24 hours away, and here’s a report from Julia Hahn at Breitbart:

With Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’s presidential hopes diminishing as his personal demons catch up with him—from his relationship with billionaire Norman Braman to his role in pushing Obama’s amnesty—the donor class seems to be turning its eyes to John Kasich’s last stand in Ohio.

The hope seems to be that a Kasich win in Ohio will not only deny GOP frontrunner Donald Trump delegates, but will also create a new vehicle for arriving at a contested convention.

Because the Kasich campaign was largely ignored as a non-factor prior to Rubio’s polling collapse, Kasich went months with virtually no scrutiny of even his most bizarre statements on the campaign trail.

However, in recent days, Trump has increasingly set his sights on Kasich—whether it be Kasich’s role at Lehman Brothers during the time of the economic collapse, as well as Kasich’s support for NAFTA and Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement—a deal which Donald Trump and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) have warned would destroy Ohio’s auto industry.

In particular, Trump has zeroed in on Kasich’s heretofore overlooked push for massive amnesty. Though it has transpired without much attention, Kasich has quietly amassed a string of bizarre, peculiar, and extreme statements on immigration that places him to the furthest leftward reaches of not just the Republican President field, but the Democratic Presidential field as well. This perhaps underscores an element of seriousness to Kasich’s previous declaration, which he had intended in jest: “I ought to be running in a Democrat primary.”

Below are just some of Kasich’s most bizarre and radical statements on immigration, which have flown under the radar.  

1) “God Bless” Illegal Immigrants . . .

2) “I couldn’t imagine” enforcing our current immigration laws: “That is not… the kind of values that we believe in.” . . .

3) Kasich likened deporting the illegal population to Japanese internment camps . . .

4) Illegal immigrants “are some of the hardest-working, God-fearing, family-oriented people you can ever meet.” . . .

5) Allowing ICE officers to do their jobs is not “humane” . . .

6) America can’t deport illegal immigrants because they are “made in the image of the Lord”  . . .

7) Kasich has called for implementing an open borders-style policy where workers can come and go as they please. . . .

8) Kasich would enact amnesty within his first 100 days. . . .

9) America shouldn’t address ending birthright citizenship because it’s “dividing people” . . .

10) Illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay because “they’re here” . . .

Read the full report here.

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