This is what this means to me: as most of you know, I am British, and always will be. But, in February 2017, we became US citizens, after nearly 18 years here. For me it was bittersweet, I just could not get into it, it all felt wrong; I felt I was selling part of my soul. 1/6

When we came out after the ceremony, there was a cardboard cut-out of President Obama and Michelle Obama by the Democratic party booth, and I had my photo taken next to them as I registered to vote. 2/6

For the next 3.9 years I watched this country get suffocated by a president with no interest in the common good: dividing us all; inciting hate against anyone white, straight and able; totally disregarding science. Literally he assaulted every single one of my values. 3/6

And it really and deeply affected me. And I don't think I realised. But I believed that we could all work together to turn it around. That is why I got so involved with the election, as you've all seen on my timeline over the past few weeks, because everything was at stake. 4/6

Today, 7th November 2020, I now feel proud to be a US citizen, proud to have a president who will do his best to unite the people and heal us, allow us to move forward and make progress in solving many vital issues such as social & racial justice & climate change. 5/6

1/10 So have I ever told you about my great grandad Frederick "Fred" Woolfenden? He was born near Oldham in 1901. I don't know much about his early life, but I know when he met my great gran he was a boxer, streetfighter and one of those fairground fighters who you take on for ££

2/10 My great gran, who herself was a game old bird, described him as a proper tough bast*rd, Anyway, as if being punched in the beak for a living wasn't enough. He and my gran decided to move to Fleetwood and Fred decided to try his luck at sea.

3/10 For most of his time at sea he was either a fireman or deckhand on "coal burners" fishing Iceland & the North Atlantic. An immensely tough job and life. When the second world war started in 1939 being a fisherman was a reserved occupation.

4/10 They continued fishing despite the risk of mines and U-boats. In Sept of 1939 Fred was part of the crew of the "Arlita" (FD188) fishing near St Kilda. All of a sudden this bugger popped up.

5/10 The sub rounded up two other trawlers put all the crews on one and sank the other two. Fred made it through the war, despite another submarine incident and continued to go to sea. In 1947 he was part of the crew of the trawler Dhoon.

Maitiú O Tuathail. @DrZeroCraic is being portrayed as the villain by @LeoVaradkar, this is slippery and devious, Maitiú is a good Man and fine Doctor who has made a mistake. Let’s not fall for a nasty @FineGael strategy. #LeoTheLiar #LeoTheLeak

1) Why we need the electoral college system. (A thread)

Using the popular vote and not the electoral college count would have made Hillary Clinton president last time and Joe Biden president this time, in a landslide, which is what we anti-Trump citizens wanted.

2) But what about "next time"? Trump is an incompetent bozo who killed 130,000 Americans, crashed the economy, embarrassed the nation and he's still very popular.

What if the next Trump is just as evil, but actually competent? The next Trump could win the popular vote, too.

3) Direct democracies ALWAYS commit suicide because the public always falls under the spell of a demagogue at some point, and they vote themselves into catastrophe.

Athenian Democracy lasted only 140 years -- far less than the US so far.

4) The Spartan system lasted 600 years, because it was more like our system -- the popular vote was merely the opinion of the people, and a wise few made their own choice -- usually with the popular vote, but not always.

5) In our system, the voters don't choose the president. Everyone thinks they do, but they do not. The president is selected by Electoral College electors on December 14.

The election we just had was the American public giving the EC our opinion.

Buckle up. This is going to be a long one. Counting votes, knowing presidential outcomes, and general electoral fraud, a thread. 🧵

I had to post this in my class today, and since I wrote it and did the article links already, here you go.

TL;DR: it's not new, it's not illegal, it's perfectly normal, it's not fraud to count them, mail-in voting isn't prone to fraud.

First: The idea that not knowing who the winner is on election night is somehow new or different is patently, absolutely false. Obviously, prior to the advent of modern communication, people didn't know who the president was on election night.

They generally didn't know until after the electoral college met in December. They MIGHT know how their state electoral college votes were being cast, but the idea that they knew what the other states were doing is entirely wrong.

Even with the advent of modern communications, the only way presidential election results have been known on election night is if there is a clear and obvious win in the electoral college - votes still left to count (and we'll get to that) are fewer than the margin of victory

Georgia GOP and Trump campaign's suit in Chatham County is in court this morning.

GOP witness conceded that he did not know whether a stack of 53 challenged ballots were received on time.

The board's witness testified they were.

Background:

You can follow along with the hearing here.

Trump's Michigan suit also heads to a speedy hearing today at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time, per a new order.

We'll be on top of them both at @LawCrimeNews.

Meanwhile in the Georgia case:

Sabrina German, the director of Chatham County's Voter Registration Office, backs up the prior witness's testimony that those 53 ballots were received on time.

None of them were double votes, she said.

Jeff Harris, from the Democratic Party of Georgia, notes both of the GOP witnesses conceded they had no idea about when those 53 ballots were received.

"They have been flatly incapable of proffering competent evidence to prove that point."

THREAD of MAPS on LS elections :

A thread of my hand-annotated maps based on the last 3 Lok Sabha elections (2009, 2014, 2019). Do take a look! :)

There are a total of 543 constituencies across 28 states and 9 union territories. /1

Map of 2009 LS elections.

INC finished as the single largest party, leading to the UPA-2 government.

(Some colours have been reused for different parties due to lack of available colours. For example, light green is used for DMK in Tamil Nadu, and BJD in Odisha) /2

Map of 2014 LS elections.

BJP captured most of the northern and western states. BJD and TMC swept Odisha and West Bengal respectively. /3

Map of 2019 LS elections.

BJP held onto most of its seats and made further inroads into the eastern and southern states. /4

Interestingly, 157 seats (~30% of all seats) have been held by the same party since 2009. The super-strongholds.

BJP has 95(!) super-strongholds, way ahead of INC which is 2nd highest with 17 super-strongholds. /5

THREAD! 👇🏻
What is Gaslighting?
1. The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a
victim by her husband in Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gas
Light, and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944.

Hearing coming up at the top of the hour on the USPS lawsuits over possible delayed delivery of mail-in ballots.

Yesterday, Judge Sullivan indicated Postmaster DeJoy was not "off the hook" for failing to follow an Election Day order to sweep facilities for misplaced ballots.

Note that court staff have set up two more public lines after hundreds of people dialed in yesterday:

We also got a dump of data from USPS in the last hour or so on:

Extra and late trips
On-time delivery percentages
Number of inbound/outbound ballots processed

(all stats the agency has been sharing/updating daily over the last week)

DOJ has brought with today several USPS processing facility managers, per Sullivan's request yesterday, including from Philly, Central Penn, Greensboro and the Mid Carolinas.

Vote Forward attorney says the data USPS filed this morning suggests that 150K ballots were delivered yesterday, including 604 ballots in Atlanta and 7K in Pennsylvania.

Rarely do this but I’ve transcribed this clip word for word because it’s too powerful not to. It’s a heart to heart. Watch or read if easier. @esglaude

“America is not unique in its sins as a country. We’re not unique in our evils to be honest with you.

You have no idea how furious I am to agree with Robin McAlpine on this. Centrism is the Golden Mean Fallacy made manifest in politics: if one party says the sky's blue & the other says it's red, the centre concludes that the sky must clearly be purple.

Those dismayed at what is evidently considerable support for Trump must remember that fascism isn't a fad. It takes time to grow. It's been growing a long time. It will take a long time to root out. This will be the work ahead, even if Trump holds on for now. 1/

I think, too, we shld see past 1:1 conflation of American racism w/ fascism. Former is prerequisite of latter. It's always been there. Fascism hasn't. Fascism is racism surging *&* converging w/ multiple tributaries of violence (fantasy & fact), grievance, & personality cult.

So on one hand, Trump isn't an aberration; on the other, yes, he is worse than what's come before. I believe Trumpism is an inevitability. I also believe there is real historical reason to hope that its defeat--not yet, whoever wins--is also an inevitability. 3/

There have been U.S. fascisms before. The Klan, of course, & its politicians. I think also of the 1930s New Order of Cincinnatus, which elected a governor. They rejected the sieg heil salute as "*too* fascist." Emphasis theirs. They wanted just the right amount. 4/

And there have been plenty of racists in the White House. Trumpism is different--in part because of its vile wink, its grotesque "irony." Real fascism, the metastatic kind, is marked by a perversion of wit. That's how it gathers up fellow travelers. 5/

I believe very strongly we need to start tolerating one another more, making space for one another, working hard to bridge the divide. It's a theme I've been on about for a while. And I get push-back - often very indignant and heated. Sometimes outright accusatory. #cdnpoli 1/16

A point I keep trying to make, with varying degrees of success, is no matter how much other people may bug you, even disgust you, they're simply not going to disappear tomorrow. So we need to live together. It's not a question of if, it's only a question of how. #cdnpoli 2/16

The response I've never understood is the purist one. I refuse to live with X. I make no allowance for Y. How dare you (turning the question back on me) even imply we should tolerate Z. That's offensive. They are wrong and we are right. It's simple. No compromises. #cdnpoli 3/16

I consider purists to be comically self-indulgent. I've even started arguments over it. I recognize the attraction of purity. It feels great to stand firm on principle and uphold what's right. The question I return to is - now what? They're still here, as are we. #cdnpoli 4/16

What I forget, sometimes, is I view this as a political problem and not everyone does, even when talking about politics. They hear me say we need to live with the "other side" and imagine I mean make friends with them, date them, go bowling with them. That isn't it. #cdnpoli 5/16

1. When I hear @clairecmc talk about Dems learning to talk to the Piggly Wiggly crowd, I hope she'll want to join/help w my moderate messaging electioneering overall for Ds effort. BC its CRUCIAL to understand- Ds & outside groups tried already to cater to these voters on the

2. persuasion. That in fact, this cycle was the product of a very concerted effort of that strategy driven by high profile data firms on the D side (many of which who've been critical of my work) & it was a complete and total failure for 2 reasons. The main 1 is that it wants

3. to ignore the effect that polarization is having on voter behavior & the limitations that is placing on certain electioneering techniques that USED TO BE EFFECTIVE and are now not. I want to make something really clear- it is only in places where at least 1 element of the D's

4. operation "went rogue" that Biden pulled out wins: GA, where Abrams made electioneering about turning out the new coalition, AZ, where the AZ state party did the same, but with Latino voters, MI & WI where the state parties put into effect base-centric voter turnout strategies

5. at odds w the party's conventional playbook to focus on turnout, and/or places where concentrations of the D's new coalition: college-educated whites + minority voters (and young voters) are so high (like NE 2) that sub-par strategy doesn't matter, turnout surges are naturally

So it’s starting to look to me like this is what’s gonna happen. Within 24 hours Biden will be declared the winner. Let’s face it he only needs 6 votes to “claim victory”. The MSM will of course spread this far and wide. The left will rejoice and cry tears of joy. Do you really..

1) Statement from the Trump Campaign

🚨 UPDATE 🚨

Let me make something crystal clear:

No one is trying to undue the just results of a fair & impartial election, regardless of its winner.

Fact.

However, this is not simply about "every vote being counted."

The US election news has largely overshadowed a seismic moment in global finance: Ant, a fintech company that spun out of Alibaba/Alipay, was scheduled to have the world's largest IPO, topping even Aramco, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

Then Chinese regulators canceled it.

1/

As @yvessmith writes in her excellent @nakedcapitalism breakdown, the consensus narrative on this is capricious Chinese regulators changed their minds and jerked the rug out from under Ali's billionaire owner Jack Ma.

The reality is a lot

To understand it, you need to understand the difference between the Chinese and American "money story." In the US, there is widespread, unquestioning faith in the fairytale that money predates the state and is separate from it.

3/

In this story, people come together to trade but are plagued by disparate goods: if I want to pay for your chickens with a cow, how do you make change? They spontaneously decide that something (gold?) is money and price their cows and chicks in it.

4/

Then, governments come along tax our gold away, and then to add insult to injury, governments abandon gold and insist that paper is as good as gold, print too much of it and crash the economy!

This probably sounds familiar to you, but it's just not true.

5/