The Patriot Post® · Rust Belt Recount

Election officials in Wisconsin are scrambling today. Late Friday, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed paperwork formally demanding a recount of the November 8th election results. Stein also announced that she raised nearly $6 million for this effort and will demand recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania as well.

The idea that Jill Stein is the one behind this recount is absurd. No recount will change the fact that Stein finished in fourth place, more than three million votes behind the Libertarian Party.

Stein is being used as a battering ram by the left. I strongly suspect that she raised the funds to pay for these recounts with the help of Clinton donors. And now that Stein is demanding the recounts, the Clinton campaign is joining the effort.

The media’s ideological amnesia is truly amazing. In the last presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump if he would agree then to accept the results of election. Trump said that he wanted to wait and see. Hillary Clinton said his response was “horrendous.”

What Trump meant was that if there was a disputed result in some state for any imaginable reason, he wasn’t going to preemptively surrender his right to challenge the results, just as Al Gore did, and as Hillary Clinton is doing now.

Well, the election took place. Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton refused to concede that evening. She conceded the next day, saying, “We must accept this result.” Since then, the left has been doing all the things that it projected onto Trump during the campaign.

Bitter leftists have attacked Trump supporters.

There is a coordinated effort to intimidate members of the Electoral College.

Now the socialist/environmentalist Stein is working to challenge the results, with the full cooperation of the Clinton campaign. All they are accomplishing is stoking anxiety.

And what are the media doing? Instead of pointing this out, the talking heads are critiquing the tone of Donald Trump’s tweets in response to Hillary’s sore loser effort. I have only heard one left-wing show, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” point out the hypocrisy of the Clinton campaign and its media allies.

A Dictator Dies

Cuba’s communist dictator, Fidel Castro, died Friday. His death put America’s incredible political divide on full display. Thousands of Cuban-Americans celebrated in the streets in Miami. Many exiles have not forgotten the persecution they and other family members experienced in Castro’s Cuba.

But on the American left, there was great ambivalence. ESPN praised Castro’s sports programs and the Cuban athletes who are now playing in America. What ESPN largely overlooked is that dozens of Cuban athletes defected.

Some commentators reverted to the left’s old standby — that Cuba had Obamacare before there was Obamacare, and that it has a great educational system. Well, first of all, it’s not an educational system but an indoctrination system. Experts also question the statistics about Cuban healthcare.

But even if you accept the left’s arguments, the deal forced on the Cuban people was unacceptable. The cost of free healthcare and education was giving up religious and political rights.

Most telling about the political divide were the reactions of President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama. Trump initially tweeted that Castro was dead. He followed that up with a very Reaganesque statement condemning the “tragedies, deaths and pain” caused by Castro’s regime.

In contrast, Obama was almost sympathetic, even going so far as to “offer condolences to Fidel Castro’s family.”

[Sunday], a statement allegedly from Black Lives Matter defended Castro. The group went on to express its gratitude “to Fidel for holding Mama Assata Shakur” and “that he provided a home for Brothers Michael Finney, Ralph Goodwin, and Charles Hill…” Shakur, Finney, Goodwin and Hill were all cop killers.

Meanwhile, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick just can’t seem to avoid controversy. He made headlines for wearing a T-shirt featuring Castro’s image at a press conference in which he defended his right to protest our National Anthem. When asked about the Castro shirt, Kaepernick cited Cuba’s healthcare and educational systems.

[Sunday], Kaepernick’s 49ers played the Miami Dolphins in Miami. Needless to say, he did not get a warm welcome from the city’s Cuban population.

On the game’s final play, as Kaepernick was driving for a touchdown, he was taken down by Dolphins linebacker Kiko Alonso, whose father escaped Castro’s Cuba. Afterwards, Alonso confessed that “there was some bad blood there for me with Kaepernick… I did try to hit him.” And Alonso got him good.