Life Comes At You Fast Thread: Just two weeks into his presidency Biden's resolve is being tested by Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Isreal, China, and even Burma.

More from Alexander Muse

BREAKING: In a new video @PBS's top lawyer is caught telling the truth about the contempt and hatred he has for conservatives. #Expose PBS

BREAKING: @PBS Principal Counsel Michael Beller Incites Political Violence In Radical Left-Wing Agenda

\u201cGo to the White House & throw Molotov cocktails...\u201d

\u201cEven if Biden wins, we go for all the Republican voters, Homeland Security will take their children away\u2026\u201d#ExposePBS pic.twitter.com/OzBLeCP8YH
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 12, 2021

@amuse
@amuse

EXCLUSIVE: Members of the Democratic Caucus of the Senate discussed strategies to remove hundreds of Trump's judicial appointments they see as illegitimate, unqualified, and in some cases dangerous. This thread will detail their discussion and the likelihood.

@amuse
@amuse

1/ Georgia State Senate Hearing Live Tweet Thread:

The current Senate witness, J. Hutton Pulitzer, claims that the state's ballot auditors audited reproduction ballots because the original ballots are missing.

2/ This is concerning because previous witnesses testified that stacks of ballots appeared to be machine-made missing telltale creases and having identical vote markings for Biden and no other candidates.

3/ J. Hutton Pulitzer states his team can review 100% of Georgia's ballots to determine if they are REAL or FAKE within two hours. The State of Georgia has refused to allow any examination of the ballots for authenticity.

4/ J. Hutton Pulitzer claims he can determine the authenticity of the ballots from the State Farm Arena within hours if the state will make them available to his company. He calls the physical ballot the Holy Grail.

5/ The Senate has moved to compel the Georgia Secretary of State to turn over the physical ballots. The fight will likely end up in the courts as the Secretary of State has refused to comply with the Senate's request.

@amuse
@amuse

1/25 ELECTOR CHALLENGE THREAD

Each state governor sent their slate of electors by registered mail to Senate President Pence. By tradition, he will count these votes in a joint session of Congress tomorrow. If he simply counts those votes Biden will become president. But...

2/ Traditionally states have empowered their governors to certify and transmit the votes of their electors to the Senate President but this year at least six GOP-controlled legislatures acted to revoke this authority and count the votes of electors for President Trump.

3/ The first question is whether or not the state's legislatures have the constitutional authority to rescind the governors' traditional authority to transmit the 'official' vote of the electors to the Senate President.

4/ Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3, gives the state legislature the sole authority to determine the manner of appointment of electors. While a state has the right to outsource this to the governor they do not lose the right to change their mind at a later date.

5/ Six state legislatures changed their minds and voted to send alternative electors to the Senate President. These electors were loyal to President Trump and cast their ballots for him. So what is the problem?

Alexander Muse
@amuse

BREAKING: Two liberal Democrats have written a report debunking claims that social media companies
censor conservatives. Ironically, they managed to censor the 'conservatives' they purportedly studied. https://t.co/CFxlB2y9zK

More from Biden

$Thomas Wood \U0001f30a$

Thomas Wood 🌊
@twoodiac

Biden saying that Rs “beat the living hell out of us” in downballot races across the country is significant, because (1) he said it to an audience that didn’t really want to hear it and https://t.co/FM7OwUgWYH 1/8

(2) because he wouldn’t have said it unless it was based on conclusive internal polling. 2/8

It is also encouraging if it *is* the correct analysis of Ds’ disappointing-- even calamitous--electoral outcomes in downballot races.

It is encouraging because it is easily remediable with better messaging. 3/8

In fact, Biden made it clear during the election that he did not favor actually defunding the police: that he only favored reforming the police, and specified policies to do that. But he didn’t say it loud enough, and downballot D politicians didn’t either. 4/8

(The R messaging over “defunding the police” seems to have worked to protect R politicians in downballot races, but wasn’t enough to get Trump himself reelected over the repugnance Ds and Independents felt for him.) 5/8

David Frum
@davidfrum

I got overnight via email a query from @briansflood at Fox News, the principal part of which I reproduce below. I answered by email too. I'll append that reply in the next threaded tweet:

My reply:

Hunter Biden's dubious business activities have been reported for years. Here for example is @TheAtlantic in September 2019, year *before* @nypost https://t.co/qZBTpyuysM

That emails attributed to Hunter Biden were circulating was also known well before the NYPost story in October. Here's TIME magazine https://t.co/JvpEKdG0U4

What @NYPost added to the work earlier done by others was a new *origin* story for the materials that circulated in Ukraine in 2019. When other media organizations attempted to corroborate that story, hijinx ensued. https://t.co/ZJGZWq7etU @thedailybeast account

Grace Fogarty
@Grace_E_Fogarty

https://t.co/fhVL1fjDhC

Thank you Victor for this gift.

Nothing punitive or carceral, nor punishment related, nor negativity related should ever be tied to healing, recovery, rebuilding one's life or anything that makes a person feel worse about himself, herself, or themself. We know enough now to understand that punishment, loss

and/or reminders of past traumas and/or losses have no business and play nothing but a negative role, in rebuilding self-esteem, self-worth, self-love, community and the meaningful things we all need to create lives for ourselves that we feel are worth living. Especially in

exceedingly early ‘sobriety’, ‘abstinence’ and/or the traditional deprivations of one’s substance(s) of choice when people have had their only coping mechanism ripped away from them, under the ancient and provenly ineffective current model of ‘recovery’.

The author @johannhari101 , wrote the book ‘Chasing the Scream The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs’ said in his now famous Ted talk ‘Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong’:

Noah Berlatsky
@nberlat

it is okay to criticize joe biden. we're going to need to do a lot of it in the next four years, so might as well get into practice.

he has always said a lot of stupid shit, and I suspect he will continue to do that. he's always been bad on lots of issues, and I suspect that will continue as well.

he is susceptible to pressure though. which is a reason to pressure him.

he's sort of going to end up as one of the greatest presidents ever or as a disaster at this point, given the nightmare hole he's got to crawl out of. so...hopefully people will point out when he's fucking up or we're all fucked.

Clyburne and Schumer have already said his 10k student debt plan is weak tea and he should do better. and they're right! hopefully he will listen and not be a dope.

Paul Poast
@ProfPaulPoast

After 4 years of Donald Trump, the US must "reassure" its allies.

That's what I'm reading/hearing lately, such as in this @nytimes piece. What do international relations scholars know about reassuring allies? Can it be done? Is it even

This passage from the article captures well the call for "reassurance": the US must convince its allies in Asia and Europe that the US would indeed use its nukes to protect them.

That's a tall order!

Indeed, such a tall order that it's been a major question explored by international relations scholars for a long time. A LONG TIME.

The topic was of keen debate in the 1950s, with Henry Kissinger writing a series of pieces on the topic, such as this 1956 @ForeignAffairs

The academic discussion picked up in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

This included Robert Schelling's paper in the first issue of the Journal of Conflict

1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here:

3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.

4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.

5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.

$Brianne Kimmel \U0001f4ac$