AT AMAZON, LifeSpan Fitness TR5000-DT3 Under Desk Treadmill.

UM, NO. Listen Up With Speakers in Lightbulbs, Shower Heads.

THE TRULY UBIQUITOUS INTERNET: Starlink beta testers are impressed with the Internet speeds on the new service. “According to some early speed tests done in different locations around the US, users are getting anywhere from 100 to 203 Mbps on downlink and around 15 to 33 Mbps on uplink. Meanwhile, the latency varies between 20 to 45 milliseconds, which is pretty much in line with SpaceX estimates. Upload speeds are still lower than the expected 50 to 150 Mbps, and one user in Idaho reported that connection drops every 2 to 3 minutes in games and video calls are common.”

That’s roughly on par with what Comcast usually delivers, except it costs a bit less — and Starlink doesn’t require me to spend $10 a month on bundled cable channels I never watch, just for the privilege of buying their internet service.

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LOCKDOWN CASUALTIES: Diagnostic tests, elective procedures dropped early in COVID-19 pandemic.

THEIR BODIES, THEIR CHOICE: Michigan AG asks residents to stop telling staff to shove Sharpies up their butts.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Political Polling Dead?

BY THE TIME WE STARTED LOCKDOWNS IT WAS ALREADY TOO LATE: 20% of NYC residents had COVID-19 by early March, study says.

REALIGNMENT: ‘A decade of power’: Statehouse wins position GOP to dominate redistricting. “Democrats spent big to take control of state legislatures but lost their key targets. Now they’ll be on the sidelines as new maps are drawn.”

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: The New York Times Didn’t Learn Its Lesson.

We know now that the New York Times‘s letter to its readers in the wake of President Donald Trump’s surprise 2016 victory was a non-apology apology.

Blindsided by Trump’s surprise victory, the Times pledged to examine whether it had underestimated the depth and breadth of his support, and to rededicate itself to understanding and reflecting “all political perspectives and life experiences.”

As the kids say, LOL. The paper’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election was not only as misleading as it was four years ago, it was misleading in the same way, overstating the odds of Democrats everywhere thanks, at least in part, to a belief in race and gender as the defining features of American politics. Identity politics has come to define the New York Times, but the country isn’t so monolithic.

Frankly, I was expecting much bolder reforms after Tom Cotton owned the newspaper this summer.

IT’S BECAUSE OF MAIL-IN VOTING: The Disastrous 2020 Election Will Never Be Resolved.

It all began with mail-in voting—that scandal-ready procedure that was the electoral equivalent of flying over American states in B-52s as if they were behind enemy lines and dropping ballots at random.

If one were to design a system by which a democracy could be subverted, even destroyed, universal mail-in voting (not, of course, normal absentee voting that requires the citizen to request a ballot) would be at or near the top of a list.

What could go wrong?

It’s not just the obvious—dead people voting, people who left the state voting, illegal aliens voting, signatures no one could possibly recognize being authenticated, signatures with no record, envelopes being back-dated, ballots found in gullies, ballots dumped in gullies, ballot harvesting, foreign agents voting surreptitiously en masse, deadlines that keep moving like the proverbial goal posts, and who knows what.

It’s an actual guarantee of chaos—and that’s what we had and have.

No one will ever really know what happened.

The pandemic was the excuse, but I strongly suspect it was more than that. I suspect, in fact I’m sure, that the intention of some was to utilize the pandemic to institute mail-in voting because they knew it would create this chaos, almost like an Antifa for the electoral system.

How do we know it was in some ways intentional?

There was plenty of warning. Just this June, 223,000 ballots in Nevada’s Clark County—17 percent of that county’s electorate that includes Las Vegas—were sent willy-nilly to the wrong addresses for their primary, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

No evidence has been forthcoming that this was corrected. PILF president and general legal counsel J. Christian Adams calls mail-in voting “chaos that lends itself to fraud.”

PILF has posted a rather droll video—if it weren’t so depressing—of their investigators going to some of these registration addresses that turn out to be commercial businesses, not homes, where the putative voter may or may not have once been employed (in some cases no one seems to have heard of them). These include an abandoned mine, of all things.

The world is laughing, and rightly so.

THOUGHTS FROM INSTAPUNDIT READER STEPHEN CLARK:

The handling of the votes stinks to high heaven this time and there will be no sanitizing this to the satisfaction of Trump’s electorate. Trump will, I think, pursue this to its legal end. So, with Fernandez’s thread linked above in mind, let’s suppose that Trump is declared the loser. Trump will then leave the White House without assistance: the left will be denied their imagined scene. But, does he show up on January 20 to bless the transition? After all this? Why? For the sake of the Republic…and dignity?

I would argue that he shouldn’t. This will produce an apoplectic fit among his enemies, and sadly among too many Republicans. So what? The transition will still occur. The Republic, such as it is, will still stand. Yet, it should in this event be shamed and the event itself seen to be shameful. It would be that. Certainly. The very fact that Biden now claims that he will govern as a president of “America” after serial slanders of more 60 million people is hideously laughable. The transition should not take place as if this was anything like the past. Even in the lead up to the Civil War we could at least manage an election with dignity surpassing the present and without the obvious taint of nationwide fraud. What has taken place over the last four years, and more, which has led to this denouement, was allowed to happen: allowed by Democrats and the left surely, but also by many GOP members of Congress and their supporters outside all of whom fled the field too often. They, most of all, should be denied any sense of dignity, and the fiction that the past can now be simply set aside. Too late. Much too late.

We’ve come a very long way from ages past when honor mattered. Affairs of honor are no more, and not solely for being outlawed. Even “fighting words” are now a distant memory. Many think this an improvement. Yet, I wonder whether our society would stand improved if fighting words regained their meaning and more than few, now confident in their slander, instead walked around with loosened teeth and broken noses.

Well, as I note in my chapter on dueling in the Hamilton book, dueling had many downsides, but it did ensure that people understood that things have consequences. Too many moderns seem to think otherwise.

BREAKING: Decision Desk HQ calls PA, election for Biden.

On the other hand: Reap What You Sow: Bethany Mandel Just Decimates Lefties Lecturing The GOP On ‘Accepting Results’ In Vicious Thread.

Flashback: Bush Wins? Not As Democrat Dan Rather Sees It.

Rather began: “Nineteen days after the presidential election, Florida’s Republican Secretary of State is about to announce the winner — as she sees it and she decrees it — of the state’s potentially decisive 25 electoral votes. Katherine Harris will officially certify the state’s election returns…The believed certification — as the Republican Secretary of State sees it — is coming just hours after a court ordered deadline for counties to submit their hand count and recount totals.”

“The reason we’re on the air right across the board nationally right now is because Florida’s Secretary of State — a Republican, as we’ve mentioned before — campaigned actively for George Bush, well-connected to Governor Bush’s Governor brother Jeb Bush in Florida, but a woman who has consistently said ‘I’m trying to do my job, right down to the letter of the law, as best I can’…She will certify — as she sees it — who gets Florida’s 25 electoral votes. Those 25 electoral votes potentially will be decisive.”

Rather explained the signing: “What’s happening here is the certification — as the Florida Secretary of State sees it and decrees it — is being signed…After this, it will be, at least in the opinion of the Secretary of State, that the results will be final…The Secretary of State, as she has restated here, in effect believes that the election certification she gives should stand.”

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record wrote in 2018: Florida Recount Finally Wraps Up, Al Gore Declared President.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Welcome to the Everlasting Gobstopper Post-Election Era.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: If you were looking to tear apart a country at peace, would there be a better way than to brazenly steal an election while major media institutions provided you cover?

Answer: Nope.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

  • The trouble with kids these day is grownups.
  • It’s time to cencor the censors.
  • No need to make up fake news when the real news is bad enough.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

BONUS: Election 2020: Congratulations Are in Order — To All of Us. “What Trump — and we — have done this week was damn near a miracle, even if (God forbid!) the addled proto-corpse of Joe Biden is sworn into office on January 20.”

This one is just for our PJMedia/Townhall VIP members, so if you’ve been thinking of becoming a member, you can do so here — and don’t forget to use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code.

FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE CLAIMING VICTORY, THEY DON’T SEEM VERY HAPPY: Amid Tears and Anger, House Democrats Promise ‘Deep Dive’ on Election Losses.

Related: The media are very disappointed in Hispanic voters.

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