​www.intercomsonline.com/2-way-radio-range-how-far-can-two-way-radios-communicate

One of the most common questions people ask when they are in the market for a two-way radio or wireless intercom is how far do they communicate? Unfortunately asking this question is along the lines of asking, "How far is up?". There are lots of variables involved and no easy, definitive answer. A brief lesson on radio signal transmission is required to understand the whole range issue.

If you are old enough to remember when AM radio was popular you may remember listening to radio stations that were hundreds of miles away. For frequencies like these below 2 Megahertz (MHz), these signals follow the Earth's curvature because they are reflected off the atmosphere. So AM radio signals in low-noise environments can be received by radios that are way below the horizon hundreds of miles away.

The two-way radios and intercoms available for you to purchase usually fall in the frequency range of 150MHz to 900MHz (this covers our 151.7MHz channel and 448.6MHz Ogden Repeater channel). Unlike the AM radio waves, radio waves in these frequencies travel in straight lines and as a general rule cannot travel over the horizon or behind solid obstacles.
​
But as in all general rules, there are exceptions to the rules. Even though these frequencies travel via "line-of-sight" paths, radio signals can travel through many non-metallic objects and be picked up through walls or other obstructions. Even though we can't see between antennas of a transmitter and receiver, this is still considered line-of-sight to the radios. Also, radio waves can be reflected, or bounce off surfaces so the straight line between radios, may not always be so straight.
​
Knowing that our radio waves travel in straight lines, then to figure out their maximum range for a two way radio we have to factor in the curvature of the Earth. When you stand on Earth and press the talk button on your radio, the radio waves are going straight and they will eventually just go straight off into space once they pass the horizon. So the distance of the horizon is technically the maximum communication range for a two way radio. But you have to factor in antenna height as well.

NOTICE TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE

​There has been a Notice of Intent to File a Claim provided to the Republican Party Chair. This means the Party has time to correct this act of omission, or be sued.

The claim is directed against members of the State Central Committee and State Party Officers, who have persistently disregarded our Party Constitution and failed to demand the correction of mistakes in direct violation of party members and Claimant’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Background

The Utah Republican Party held an indirect primary (their Convention) on April 27, 2024. Elected delegates voted for Republican candidates for various state and federal offices. Some candidates, including Phil Lyman, received over 60% of the delegate votes cast. Candidates seeking the Republican nomination in the Party's indirect primary receiving more than 60% of the delegate vote become the nominee at convention and are to be included in the general election ballot certification per the Utah Republican Constitution. 

A qualified political party that nominates a candidate in their indirect primary, must certify the name of the candidate and the appropriate ballot (primary or general) to the lieutenant governor before…” 5:00 p.m. on April 29, 2024. The State Party Chair serving as "liaison with the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Utah on all matters relating to state election laws," provides the ballot certification to the Lieutenant Governor subject to the directives of the State Central Committee, the governing body of the Party. 

It is important to note here, the Lt Governor serves as the chief election officer whose main responsibility is to oversee elections. Pursuant to Utah Code, the lieutenant governor is to perform ministerial duties (without judgement) and place those candidates certified to the appropriate ballots as instructed by the Utah Republican Party. So, either the Utah Republican Party Chair submitted a proper ballot to the Lt Governor (LYMAN STRAIGHT TO THE GENERAL based on the Party’s constitution) and the Lt Governor submitted a counterfeit ballot to the state…because it was in her best interest to do so...or the Party Chair submitted a counterfeit ballot to the Lt Governor and she played along because again, it was in her best interest to do so. In either case, one is guilty and the other is stupid! Or together they conspired to violate the Party’s 1st and 14th Amendment rights. And as the governing body of the party, it is your duty to see that the rules are carried out accordingly. If laws were broken, you as a State Central Committee member have personal liability if it is not corrected. 
 
With respect to the SCC, each member is elected by their membership to represent the interests of their constituents. They have a duty, in business we call it a fiduciary duty. It means you have an obligation to act in the best interest of those you represent. The SCC has been properly noticed of this constitutional violation, and any inaction on their part is a violation of their fiduciary duty. Whether their negligence is civil or criminal, it is a gross dereliction of their duty to withhold the proper exercise of their responsibility, to see that the Party’s laws are faithfully executed!

​Below find the Actual Notice of Intent to File a Claim with appropriate citations...

For years in Utah, democrats have joined the Republican Party in order to get elected. This is possible because the UTGOP has been complacent in allowing membership in the Party simply by declaring it so. While this created challenges for voters to understand who the real Republican is, the Caucus/Convention system provided the locally elected delegates the final say in who indeed could represent the Party on the primary or general election ballot. In most cases, Democrats who declared themselves Republicans found out they could not pass the scrutiny of the well-informed delegates. So, they had to change the rules and provide an alternate path to the Republican ballot in order to get elected...Meet Count My Vote! 

According to SB54, “whenever there is at least one candidate chosen by convention and at least one who gained candidacy for the same office by collecting signatures, a qualified political party must participate in a primary election to choose between them.” If a party’s only candidates for an office are chosen at its convention, the party “is not required to participate in the primary election for that office.” For qualified political parties then, the requirement to participate in the primary only exists when the signature-gathering path to nomination is used by “declared republican” candidates outside of the Convention process. “A State cannot substitute its judgment for that of the party as to the desirability of a particular internal party structure.” The Party is a private constitutionally protected institution.
 
When a qualified political party only has candidates who emerged from its convention, the law does not require the party to participate in a primary. If Party members want a signature-gathering route to nomination outside the convention process, they can surely rally for that change to the Party’s bylaws, and if a cabal tried but failed to truly shut out the voices of ordinary members, they are free to quit, to form a new party, or to cast their votes elsewhere. It is none of the state’s business. 

ONE FOR ALL...ALL FOR ONE! 
The Utah Republican Party State Convention: Saturday, April 27, 2024 
​
My Convention Report 
Bill Olson NOG12 
Weber County 
_______________________________________________   

​After spending an hour and a half in line to register as a delegate, I entered the convention hall to find a seat. The hall was full of delegates of which almost half raised their hands as first-time delegates. Shortly after the prayer, pledge of allegiance, approval of the rules and the agenda we got started. I was standing at the microphone waiting for my turn as a delegate to gain the floor as a member of our deliberative assembly represented by all 29 counties in Utah.

As a deliberative assembly, our state delegates meet at our state convention to determine, in full and free discussion, the election of our state candidates and courses of action to be taken by our Party. To hold more efficient meetings and respect the opinion of each member, we adhere to the rules of parliamentary procedure. We are there to exhaust all debate before any vote is taken or decisions are made. Debate cannot be exhausted if it is restrained and that is what happened here today.  

Prior to the Convention there were many of us delegates concerned about the direction of the Party and its leadership. Since the success of SB 54 our caucus/convention system has been essentially neutered. This unconstitutional legislation forced on the Party by big money interests has created a path to getting their candidates elected without the hassle of delegate scrutiny or Party endorsement.  

With the deterioration of election integrity over the last few election cycles, many in the Party have related concerns about the method of elections at our Convention. The State Central Committee (SCC) is the Policy making body of the Party. Members are elected by every county; these committee members operate as the legislative branch of the Party with the responsibility of governing the Party as a deliberative assembly. That means they make the rules by majority or in some cases a super majority using Roberts Rules of Order. Roberts Rules allows for the majority to rule while acknowledging the rights of the minority.  Under these rules, the SCC determines how the Party business is conducted.  

BY Hayden Ludwig 

​In elections, good data separates the winners from the losers.

Left-wing operatives understand this better than anyone, which is why they’ve built the world’s most impressive machine to find, register, and turn out their preferred voters—all using tax-exempt nonprofits created to encourage charity, not politics. Activists label it “civic participation” because they’re benignly registering people to vote. In reality, they’re cynically helping just Democrats vote.

Conservatives have witnessed the awesome power of this election machine in states like Georgia and Arizona. But there’s one component they’ve yet to reckon with: the Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as “ERIC.” ERIC is a 501(c)(3) public charity, not a government agency; yet this privately run organization has incredible access to sensitive information on 208 million Americans—62 percent of the total population—across 31 states.

ERIC claims it uses this data strictly to help its member states maintain clean voter rolls by tracking when voters move, die, or fall off the registration list. The more states that join the compact, the theory goes, the more accurately ERIC can funnel information to them.

Yet shocking new discoveries about the compact’s origins reveal ERIC’s true purpose: Compiling a near-perfect picture of where America’s voters—and potential voters—live nationwide, driving Democratic victories in battleground states. Amazingly, ERIC’s membership agreement forces states to conduct expensive voter registration campaigns, yet does not require states to clean their voter rolls, the very reason most states enrolled in the compact.

This is ERIC’s value to the Left, the best data money can’t buy.

ERIC’s Data-Driven Origins

​Yet all this microtargeting machinery is only as good as the voter files that inform it. Critically, while Catalist and others could purchase those voter files, no such list of unregistered people exists.

State motor vehicle departments and other agencies collect vital information on potential voters, but that data is inaccessible to companies under federal privacy laws. Worse, the most desirable demographic—young people—typically have no credit history or utilities in their name, making them virtually invisible to political data vendors. What was needed to reach this electoral goldmine was a central database on all 65 million eligible-but-unregistered individuals, but that was impossible with traditional data-collecting methods.

Enter ERIC.

ERIC began life in 2012 as a project of the Pew Center on the States (an arm of the liberal funder Pew Charitable Trusts) under David Becker, Pew’s director of election initiatives. If the goal was to get states to share valuable voter data with a private organization, ERIC needed a powerful selling point and the guise of political neutrality. So for the next four years Becker led the push to lobby nearly two-thirds of the states into joining ERIC—always marketing it as an opportunity to improve their voter rolls more effectively and affordably than they could do themselves.

Early ERIC funding came from George Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society, which granted $725,000 in 2011 “to support the Pew Center on the States’ voter registration modernization initiative” and “expand [its] scope and scale.”

The idea for ERIC may even have originated with Soros, who after all had previously helped found the Democrats’ premier data firm, Catalist. In 2010, Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) revealed its goal of using voter registration “modernization” programs as cover to convince states they needed outside help to maintain their voter rolls. OSF termed it “reform dialogue.”

OSF rallied two more left-wing organizations to the cause: the Brennan Center and Advancement Project, both of which oppose voter ID laws and lobby for the Left’s usual raft of election “reforms” such as same-day registration and felon re-enfranchisement. (Recall that the Brennan Center had already called for mass voter registration campaigns “through a modernized registration system” to advance the “progressive agenda” beginning in 2010.)

​“Any candidate blaming local officials for the failures of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is demonstrating to voters that they don’t understand important issues facing our state and country,” said Sheriff Mike Smith, President of the Utah Sheriffs’ Association.

“It’s bizarre that Republican candidates for high office would keep repeating false statements that have been walked back by the Biden Administration,” Smith continued. “It’s even more bizarre that candidates in Utah would malign local law enforcement without first knowing the facts.”

Background

Last year, a draft memo was put out by ICE’s Salt Lake City Field Office Director Michael Bernacke titled “Sanctuary State Designation for the State of Utah”. In this memo, Bernacke took it upon himself to declare Utah a sanctuary state. He made absurd claims that Utah sheriffs are destabilizing ICE’s law enforcement capabilities in Utah and surrounding states. State leaders joined Utah’s sheriffs in voicing strong objection, and ICE immediately rescinded the draft memo.

Historically, not all sheriffs in Utah have been willing or able to house federal detainees in county jails. Those who did contract with ICE have been subjected to unending federal mandates, regulations that are not based upon constitutional rights, legal standards not based on case law, and demands that ICE detainees receive special treatment far exceeding what incarcerated U.S. citizens receive.

The demand that ICE detainees receive special privileges is accompanied by audits and threats of lawsuits from liberal Washington DC based special interest groups. The ICE policies and practices under the Biden Administration have made it impossible for Utah’s sheriffs to house their civil detainees.

Now some candidates for office are openly citing the rescinded ICE memo and demagoguing on the issue using false information. As the election year continues and the political season heats up, Utah’s sheriffs respectfully request that candidates running for office at least reach out and ask a sheriff before taking positions and issuing statements that are directly related to the work they do.

​By Otto Krauss

​There has been some news lately about the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) and what it does, but mostly because a number of states have cut ties with the organization in the last year. Why is ERIC significant and why should Utahns care about this organization?

​"​If I were the devil … If I were the Prince of Darkness, I’d want to engulf the whole world in darkness. And I’d have a third of its real estate, and four-fifths of its population, but I wouldn’t be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree — Thee."  

​"​So, I’d set about however necessary to take over the United States. I’d subvert the churches first — I’d begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: ‘Do as you please.’"

​​“To the young, I would whisper that ‘The Bible is a myth.’ I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what’s bad is good, and what’s good is ‘square.’ And the old, I would teach to pray, after me, ‘Our Father, which art in Washington…’"

The federal government’s failed policies and inability to protect our country’s border is causing upheaval and strain on states across the nation, including Utah. We are being forced to deal with the public safety, financial and humanitarian consequences of President Biden's failure to enforce immigration law. The result is that over two-thirds of captured illegal aliens are released back into our community here in Utah.

The Biden administration continues to make detention of illegal aliens difficult or impossible for local authorities to handle. Several federal agency's tactics are designed to discourage local jails from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) threatening the public safety of all people living in Utah.

ICE’s detention standards have become more absurd as a reaction to multiple lawsuits filed by many anti-enforcement groups. The Biden Administration’s response has been more stringent federal standards for ICE “detainees.” Whether intended or not, the consequences of these standards are that they cannot be met by our county jails.

Much has been said about how SB 54 and the signature gathering path has disrupted our Party’s ability to nominate candidates at our convention. What hasn’t been said is under these new election laws the Party is still in control of holding our convention and setting the parameters necessary to send a convention winner to the States Primary election. The Party makes that determination, constitutionally.
 
There is nothing in current election law that prohibits how a qualified political party determines its convention winner. And because the signature candidate is already in the Primary with an R behind their name, there is nothing that prohibits the Party from directing their delegates to consider a vote for a signature candidate as a wasted vote to determine the Party’s convention winner. The state runs elections, but we, the Republican Party of Utah, as a private constitutionally independent organization, run our political party and we alone determine how we qualify a convention winner for the state-run Primary.
 
As it is now, I doubt we will ever have another Primary election in Utah without a signature candidate with an R behind their name on the ballot. For this reason, our Party must determine how we can remain relevant in delivering a convention only candidate to the Primary vetted by our elected delegates. Among all the unfair practices within our current election law, nothing prohibits us from exercising our constitutional rights of assembly and association in determining our Party’s approved candidate. We must rewrite our bylaws to protect our caucus/convention process. Or dissolve the Party because nothing matters except declaring yourself a Republican, buying signatures, and spending big money to get elected.

​Our Caucus/Convention system here in Utah is the closest we will ever get to real self-government. The idea that local neighborhood groups actually have a say in who represents them in the Party business is lost on most Americans. Without the Caucus system, our ability for grass roots participation in the political process will vanish. You will be represented by the big money influencers currently attacking our conservative values and principles.

As a Precinct Vice Chair, I worked hard to ensure participation. I conducted many Caucus training sessions and personally hung 100 door hangers in my Precinct. I reached out to the Party for contact information to communicate with Republican voters in my neighborhood and was surprised to discover that no effort had been made by Party leadership to provide anything other than name and addresses of voters used to register for caucus. I guess in the real world of text and email communications, the Party prefers snail mail. So, we went about our business of running our Caucus with 39 attendees out of 493 registered Republicans. That’s an 8% participation rate so the efforts by the big money liberals to destroy our Caucus system is working full steam ahead.

Big Tech, federal agencies, and corporate media are working together to undermine the country and control your thoughts.

It’s tempting to look at Big Tech, corporate media, and federal agencies as distinct industries and entities with their own goals and organizational structures, but that’s not the right way to analyze them in 2024. In reality, they are just different systems within the same organism, similar to how eyes, ears, and legs are all part of a human body. They have different roles and functions, but all are subordinate to the same overarching goal: total power.

In 2024, these entities all function as part of a single system: the American Stasi. Recall that the Stasi was the oppressive spying and law enforcement regime deployed by the Soviet Union against the people of East Germany. The American regime today is every bit as corrupt and deceitful as the Soviet Stasi was during the Cold War. Big Tech and the federal surveillance system work hand in glove to manipulate what you see, hear, and think. The surveillance state spies on you constantly if you engage in activities it detests: going to church or speaking out at a school board meeting, for example. It develops and deploys complex technologies used to manipulate your perception of reality.

Republicans and apparently the Republican Party doesn't care about our southern border or American sovereignty, but they sure love Ukraine. How do I know? Meet The Republican Senators who lied to the American people about prioritizing border security over Ukraine funding.

In a 67-32 vote last week,  17 Republican senators voted alongside their Democrat buddies to advance a $95 billion “emergency security spending bill” that included $60 billion in aid to Ukraine and nothing to protect our border?

Ladies & gentlemen...here are 13 of those traitors who lied directly to the American people. Will you do anything about this?

​According to Senator Rand Paul, auditing the Federal Reserve is a fiscal necessity and a congressional imperative. That is why he has reintroduced the “Federal Reserve Transparency Act” (referred to as “Audit the Fed”) as his first legislation of 2024.

“Imagine a financial behemoth at the center of the biggest economy on the planet. It secretly pulls the strings of America’s fiscal destiny, and the consequences of its actions ripple through the lives of countless individuals, yet its inner workings are almost entirely unknown and not subject to any form of checks or balances. This is not the plot of a dystopian novel but the current reality of America’s Federal Reserve system.”

According to the Senator, now is the time to bring this financial giant into the light. While I totally agree, I would advise the Senator to be very careful, as many before him have met a disastrous fate when challenging the Central Bank. Among them, four US Presidents whose lives were cut short by assassins who were killed “before they got their day in court.”

History teaches us that the true guardians of democracy are not state supreme courts or rogue lawmakers, but the people themselves.

In a landscape where the law and politics intertwine, Colorado and Maine’s decision to bar former President Donald Trump from their primary ballots resonates deeply within the heart of American democracy. This isn’t a mere legal maneuver; it’s a high-stakes dance on the tightrope of American electoral politics, balancing constitutional law and political strategy.

At the heart of these decisions lies the rarely invoked insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment, a relic from the Civil War that now gains newfound significance. Essentially, it prohibits individuals who have actively worked against the Constitution through insurrection from holding any government position.

Ultimately, this issue forces us to ponder how, as a nation, we determine who ascends to the highest echelons of leadership and who does not. It’s a question that doesn’t merely seek an answer; it demands profound introspection and contemplation about the very essence of our self-government.

If Kirk were alive today, he would agree with those who are now critical of the neocons for having abandoned their conservatism in favor of an imperialistic and globalist ideology.

While a handful of writers and thinkers before him had adopted the term “conservative” and promoted it in their writings, like Peter Viereck in the 1940s, it was the publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind in 1953 that brought the term into public parlance and prominence.

Michael Federici gives a brief but insightful introduction to the newly rereleased version of The Politics of Prudence, Kirk’s collection of essays first published in 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The work attempted to present conservatism anew in an age now free from the ideological struggle of the Cold War.

Conservative Character

Federici notes that Kirk understood conservatism to be “a disposition of character rather than a collection of reified, abstract political doctrines. It is the rejection of ideology rather than the exercise of it.” This, too, is the understanding of conservatism laid out by the champion of conservatism in the 21st century, my former teacher Sir Roger Scruton.

This understanding may help one realize why conservatism fails as an ideology — because it is not an ideology. As Kirk humorously notes early on in one of the early chapters of this book, conservatives who attempt to ideologize conservatism make the first and most egregious error in understanding conservatism.

“The left’s attacks against former President Trump and America are unprecedented in US history. Drew Thomas Allen has written a powerful and timely book that gives Americans the fuel they need to confront and defeat the threat of tyranny in our time. Honest and unapologetic, Allen sees opportunity rather than despair as he charges a new generation of Americans to rescue America.  America’s Last Stand: Will You Vote to Save or Destroy America in 2024 is the right book at the right time.”

We must not let our Temple of Liberty fall. While our enemy recruits an army of our brothers and sisters to join their jihad to reduce America to rubble by appealing to our worst and wildest passions, we must rise and plant our feet firmly in their midst and preach the truth with cold, calculated reason,”

What makes Allen’s book so important is its profound sense and clarity of purpose. Christina Bobb, familiar to many as a frequent guest on Newsmax and an attorney to Donald J. Trump, perhaps best identifies this in her own advanced praise for America’s Last Stand, writing:

“The left’s attacks against former President Trump and America are unprecedented in US history. Drew Thomas Allen has written a powerful and timely book that gives Americans the fuel they need to confront and defeat the threat of tyranny in our time. Honest and unapologetic, Allen sees opportunity rather than despair as he charges a new generation of Americans to rescue America. America’s Last Stand is the right book at the right time.”

This is, indeed, what distinguishes Allen’s book from so many others. Not only is it the right book at the right time but the book we need at this time. 2024 is the most consequential election of our lifetime and Allen is wildly successful in conveying those stakes and leaving no doubt otherwise in the mind of any reader.

Allen’s words are direct and honest. “Our present conflict is unprecedented in our own nation’s history and in our own lifetimes and marks the third major test, which will determine whether America survives or dies,” Allen writes.

The world is burning yet many of our elected representatives can’t seem to find their voice to effect change. Even the Republican Party seems to be sitting it out. This is a problem of party leadership at the national, state, and even the county levels; and that is why I’m entering the race to be your next Weber County Republican Party Chair.

I’m Bill Olson proud father to two beautiful conservative young women, Alyssa & Haley...

I am a retired serial entrepreneur and I have gained my Party experience by holding many elected positions over the last 12 years, including:

• Precinct Chair
• Precinct Vice Chair
• Legislative District Chair
• Legislative District Vice Chair
• State Delegate
• County Delegate
• Member State Central Committee
• Member County Central Committee
• Member County Executive Committee
• Sub-committee Chair/State Constitution & Bylaw Committee

Let’s be honest with each other...As Republicans, our stated purpose is to nominate and support the election of Republican candidates for public office and promote the principles set forth in our Party Platform.

Did you know, all Republican Candidates seeking the nomination of the Utah Republican Party to run as a Republican for any federal, statewide, state legislative, or state school board office are required to sign a Candidate Certification Form declaring:

“I Have read the Utah Republican Party Platform, Constitution, and Bylaws. I support the Republican Party Platform...and accept it as the standard by which my performance as a candidate and as an office holder should be evaluated.”

The constitutionality of RCV turns on whether some voters are afforded “an increased opportunity to affect the outcome of an election” than other voters. Among similarly situated voters, the Equal Protection Clause does not permit some votes to carry a greater weight than others. At the heart of this inquiry is whether RCV’s rounds of tabulation function as one election or multiple elections. I believe RCV functions as multiple elections and in so doing inflicts four primary burdens on voting rights.
​
1. RCV Operates as Multiple Elections

RCV operates as more than one election and in doing so, affords some voters a weightier and unequal opportunity to influence electoral outcomes. Strong evidence that RCV systems produce more than one election exists in the text of RCV statutes, interest groups that support RCV, and state officials who have defended RCV in court. Statutes that enact RCV direct election officials to engage in multiple “rounds” of vote disbursement.

Moreover, election scholars confirm that RCV is more than one election. According to leading political science professor and voting systems expert, Dr. Jonathan D. Katz, an election is defined as a given set of voters choosing amongst a given set of candidates. Each time the voters and candidates change, there is a distinct and separate election. In practice, RCV does precisely that. If no candidate receives a majority of votes, the lowest candidates are removed from contention and eliminated from the pool of viable candidates. But not only do the candidates change in subsequent rounds of an RCV election, so do the voters. For example, in one San Francisco RCV election, by the final round of tabulation, twenty-seven percent of voters had their ranked ballots exhausted and were no longer actively participating with the other seventy-three percent of voters. Because both candidates and voters change in every subsequent round, RCV is properly considered not one, but multiple elections.

Some may argue that RCV’s practical consequence of producing multiple elections is inconsequential.  However, this commonly-deployed argument ignores the more serious threat lurking in the background. Although passed off as “subsequent rounds” of a single election, properly understood, RCV’s multiple elections treat some voters more favorably than others. Voters who rank a non-continuing candidate first, and thus have their second or third choice considered, get to morph their ballots into outcome determinative votes. In contrast, voters who rank a continuing candidate are stuck with a single choice and that single vote. Moreover, while some voters have their votes counted again and again, others have their ballots eliminated in RCV’s subsequent rounds. For an example, consider the election data from a San Francisco RCV election. It is illogical to suggest that the twenty-seven percent of voters who had their ballots exhausted by the last round were afforded an “equal chance” to impact the outcome of the election—they did not even have a vote to exercise in the later elections. Thus, contrary to the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning in Dudum, votes are not afforded the “same mathematical weight” in RCV elections. Rather, RCV operates as multiple, unequal elections where some votes are elevated to outcome-determinative status, some are locked in place, while others are exhausted entirely.

''Reagan was the great optimist' — he also said we must 'recognize that evil exists in the world'

Ronald Reagan's values, vision and vibrant personal optimism inspired a rebirth of American pride, growth and exceptionalism in the 1980s, after nearly two decades of social and cultural upheaval.

"Reagan was deeply concerned about America in the late 70s," Virginia-based historian and author Craig Shirley told Fox News Digital. "America had gone through 17 long, horrible years beginning with the assassination of JFK."

The quagmire of Vietnam, the author added, the failed presidency of Lyndon Johnson, the resignation of Richard Nixon, the Iran hostage crisis and the infamous social and economic "malaise" of the Jimmy Carter administration all created the feeling of a nation in decline.
 
Reagan countered the appearance of cultural decay with pro-growth economic policies and an investment in American muscularity abroad.

He also invested political capital in the nation’s spiritual rebirth: Patriotism, faith and family, individualism and the belief that the best days for America were still ahead. 

“The ceremony of innocence is drowned:
 The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity.”  --W.B. Yeats

Osama bin Laden rightly coached his followers that “the people want to follow the ‘strong horse’ and will abandon the weak one.”  We are witnessing our nation now being destroyed by the powerful Democrat demons and betrayed by the pitiable weakness and cowardice of our Republican champions.  Unless the Republicans, the Patriots, the Conservatives, the lovers of our Constitution, quickly rise up and display backbone, this great American experiment may well perish from the earth.

Providence and our brilliant Constitution have given us a legal pathway to saving this nation, but it must be grasped and pursued with courage and righteous power.  While the Democrats dishonored the tool of Impeachment against President Trump by using false and illegitimate reasons for their debauched actions, this must not be the excuse for abandoning this worthy instrument for correcting against corruption and stupidity in our highest public offices.

The evidence for Biden’s corruption and betrayal of America mounts by the day.  We cannot wait for the situation to ripen further.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.

This point is where many people understandably get confused.

Elevator Speech:
(1) The Patriot Act turned the intel surveillance radar from foreign searches for terrorists to domestic searches for terrorists.(2) Obama/Biden then redefined what is a “terrorist” to include their political opposition.

​

In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus, instructed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.

After 9/11/01, the electronic surveillance system, that was originally created to monitor threats from abroad, was retooled to monitor threats inside our country.  That is when all of our electronic ‘metadata’ came under federal surveillance.
That inflection point, and the process that followed, was exactly what Edward Snowden tried to point out.

What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms, so that only their political opposition became the target of this new national security system.