BC POLITICS
Saved by @Jacobtldr

1. I'm going to go through a few issues with the NY Post article on Biden, which I won't link to, but you will probably see on Twitter today.

Follow along if interested.

 2. First the information comes from a laptop that was allegedly "dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware" and never picked up.

The "shop owner," who is not identified, "couldn’t positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden"
3. The "shop owner" thinks it was Hunter Biden because of a Beau Biden sticker on the laptop.

This makes no sense. You drop off an expensive Mac laptop at a repair shop and don't leave your name or contact information?
4. But then, after claiming the shop owner couldn't identify the customer, the piece includes a receipt that was issued to "Hunter Biden" and includes an email and phone #

So why would the shop owner produce a receipt for Hunter Biden if he didn't know the ID of the customer?
5. The piece claims the shop owner then alerted the FBI to the existence of the laptop and it was later subpoenaed by a grand jury.

But the grand jury subpoena shown does not connect the laptop to Hunter Biden.
6. Then things get very weird. The shop owner says, before turning over the computer to the feds, they made a copy of the contents of the computer and gave them to Rudy Giuliani's lawyer

Mmmmhmmmm
7. The New York Post allegedly learned about this copy of the laptop through Steven Bannon.

Both Giuliani and Bannon are regular sources of disinformation
8. But this is the important point. Pretending, for a moment, that everything in the story is true (very doubtful) it is totally inconsequential.

Supposedly one "email" recovered on the laptop "proves" that Hunter once introduced a Bursima exec to his father.
9. This is a scandal? There is no word on the length of the meeting or what was discussed.

The New York Post says its significant because Biden then called for the ouster of the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Bursima.

FALSE

The prosecutor was not investigating Bursima
10. The prosecutor was corrupt, which is why the entire international community was calling for his ouster.

Replacing the corrupt prosecutor brought more scrutiny on Bursima, not less
11. Allegedly, the laptop Hunter "forgot" to pick up also contains a 12 minute video of him smoking crack and having sex with an unidentified woman.
12. Nevertheless, this incredibly sketchy, totally unverified, and ultimately irrelevant story is being promoted by mainstream journalists who don't work for the New York Post.

Don't be fooled by that.
13. I should clarify that, assuming the email is legit, it doesn't establish that a meeting took place. Just that Hunter offered an "opportunity" to meet his father.
14. As of 9:50AM, the New York Post piece has been shared more than 26,000 times on Facebook
15. If you liked this thread, you'll really like my newsletter

https://t.co/TfpCItdVSo

More from Judd Legum

Judd Legum
Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. BREAKING

3 major corporations say they'll stop donating to members of Congress who tried to overturn the election

BlueCross BlueShield (@BCBSAssociation)

Marriott (@MarriottIntl)

@CommerceBank

Follow along for more on these 3 plus 141 other

@MarriottIntl @CommerceBank 2. In the last 3 cycles, the BlueCross BlueShield PAC has donated 959K to GOP candidates and 359K to Dem candidates.

Now, BCBS's CEO says it will "suspend contributions to those lawmakers who voted to undermine our democracy"

https://t.co/r4Z4TjJUCe


@MarriottIntl @CommerceBank 3. @CommerceBank's PAC favors Republicans over Democrats by a 6 to 1 margin. The bank now says it has "suspended all support for officials who have impeded the peaceful transfer of power"

@MarriottIntl released a similar statement to Popular Information.

https://t.co/r4Z4TjJUCe


4. @tesszeeks and I contacted 144 corporations that donated this cycle to Senators who objected to the Electoral College vote

We asked if their support would continue

We got a lot of other responses + a lot of corporations who, so far, are ignoring

5. More details coming in this thread. But if you value this kind of work, please subscribe to our newsletter, Popular Information.

It's free to sign up.

The newsletter, not this Twitter account, is what makes this work possible.
GOVERNMENT
Judd Legum
Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. Texas Republicans just released the text of its voter suppression bill, SB7

Votes will be held before midnight Sunday

The bill includes a NEW PROVISION that allows judges to OVERTURN AN ELECTION "WITHOUT DETERMINING HOW INDIVIDUAL VOTERS VOTED"

Follow along if interested


2. This section appears to validate Trump's claims that he won various states because a certain number of people voted "illegally" without any other details

Now people like Guiliani can take these absurd allegations to court and, with a sympathetic judge, OVERTURN AN ELECTION

3. Texas is poised to adopt this unprecedented and radical legal provision without ANY DEBATE IN EITHER CHAMBER

It was negotiated in a secret conference committee and released on a Saturday of a holiday weekend

And there is plenty of other bad stuff in this bill

4. The final bill text also:

Bans drive-thru voting and voting after 9PM (used disproportionately by voters of color in Harris County)

Bans voting on Sundays before 1PM (Souls to the polls)

Makes it more difficult for people with disabilities to vote by mail

5. I'll keep this thread updated with more information about Texas' SB7. It completely overhauls the state's voting system and was just made public a few hours ago.

For updates and more accountability journalism, sign up for my newsletter
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Judd Legum
Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. Tucker Carlson's xenophobic, racist, and bigoted content has cost him nearly all his advertisers

It's mostly an hour of MyPillow ads and promos for other Fox shows

But Fox News doesn't care

Why?

They've rigged the game

Follow along if

2. A primary source of revenue for Fox News is PEOPLE WHO NEVER WATCH FOX NEWS.

On average cable TV subscribers pay $1.72 per month for Fox News

But only 14% watch Fox News

That means for every viewer, Fox News receives a $7.75 subsidy from

3.Every channel in a cable bundle receives a subsidy from non-viewers but Fox News' is FAR HIGHER than any other non-sports channel.

Fox News ($7.75)
CNN ($3.18)
TBS ($2.79)
FX

4. These carriage fees are Fox News' PRIMARY SOURCE OF REVENUE. In 2020, Fox News made $1.6 billion off carriage fees and $1.2 billion off advertising.

So that insulates them from advertisers leaving Tucker Carlson or any other show.

5. A substantial portion of Carlson's $10 million/year salary comes from people who find his views odious

Like Carlson's decision to use his program to advance "white replacement theory" - a racist idea explicitly cited by numerous mass
CABLE FEES
Judd Legum
Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. If you turn on CNBC, you'll hear a narrative that reckless retail investors from Reddit are destabilizing the stock market by driving up prices for GameStop and other stocks.

This is BS.

Follow along if interested.

2. Market instability was created by hedge funds and other "sophisticated" investors that SHORTED MORE GAMESTOP STOCK THAN WAS EVEN AVAILABLE FOR SALE

Retail investors are exploiting instability created by the hedge funds

They didn't start the

3. The primary "victim" of the retail investors, hedge fund mogul Gabe Plotkin, worked SAC until 2013.

What happened in 2013? SAC pleaded guilty to insider trading and paid a $1.3 billion fine.

Plotkin then left to start his own firm.

4. Plotkin made massive returns by doing a lot more shorting than most hedge funds & no one complained

But this week he was bailed out by his old boss, SAC founder Steve Cohen, and another hedge fund mogul, Citadel's Ken Griffin to the tune of

5. Cohen & Griffin now own a significant piece of Plotkin's firm. So they have an interest in Plotkin navigating out of his current predicament. They also may have exposure themselves.

This is where things get
BUSINESS
Judd Legum
Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. While @RonDeSantisFL was fighting the culture wars, banning CRT and shipping migrants to Martha's Vineyard, he failed to meaningfully address Florida's dysfunctional and collapsing property insurance market

And now things are going to get much

2. Florida's property insurance system was in crisis even though the state had not been struck by a major hurricane since 2018.

Then Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida's west coast, killing at least 74 people and inflicting tens of billions of dollars in property damage.

3. Florida property faces catastrophic risks from weather events that worsen each year due to climate change.

Floridians pay an average of "$4,231 a year per [property insurance] policy, compared to a US average of $1,544."

4. In the last five years, six Florida insurance companies have gone out of business "without responding to a hurricane, and four more are in the process of liquidation."

5. The collapsing market has left many Floridians reliant on the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., a state-run agency that is supposed to be the "insurer of last resort." It now provides property insurance for more than 1 million
CATEGORY PDFMAKERAPP GRAB PDFMAKERAPP GRAB THIS READWISEIO SAVE READWISEIO SAVE THREAD THREADER COMPILE SUMMARIZE THREADREADERAPP UNROLL PLEASE TTTTREADS UNROLL UNROLLTHREADCOM

More from Politics

Washington Pundit \xa9
Washington Pundit ©
@TWPundit
THREAD (WOW!)

1) If you want to watch a Coordinated Media Disinformation Campaign play out (just like the Trump-Russia Collision Hoax), there's one playing out right now in real

2) @TWPundit Exclusively Reported 10/13

"expect to see multiple...stories related to Turkey which will...be tied together by a massive “bombshell” piece in the @nytimes ...near election day in a well-coordinated smear campaign"
Yep, the piece just

3) The Turkey Disinformation Campaign is following the exact same playbook as the 2016 Trump-Russia Collision Hoax, and with all the same

4) In 2016, there were 3 separate stories related to Russia’s connection to @realDonaldTrump that dropped on Oct 31st.

Article #1 from Soros-funded @MotherJones by @DavidCornDC about @carterwpage alleging he was a secret Russian operative. Fake

5) Article #2 from @FinancialTimes about @SergeiMillian and his connection to Trump Tower projects
POLITICS
Christina Warren
Christina Warren
@film_girl
A brief thread on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the crazy con man who is now claiming to have hacked into the Georgia voting machines in Fulton County. 90s kids and tech aficionados might remember Jovan as the inventor of the CueCat, the dumbest gadget of all time.

Also, for anyone who wants to claim that Jovan Hutton Pulitzer (not his given name, but one he changed legally after the CueCat debacle) invented QR Codes: he did not. Like that other right-wing crazy man who claimed to have invented email, Jovan didn’t invent QR Codes.

He did invent the CueCat, a product that somehow raised $185 million dollars for a tethered barcode scanner for magazines and newspapers, so you could get ads from your ads. As I said, the dumbest product of all time. Good backup barcode scanners after they were hacked, however

Oh, that’s another thing. When CueCat was a thing, its systems were hacked. I guess that’s what makes Jovan a security expert. His bankrupt company from 20 years ago was hacked and widely mocked. He’s a genius.

In recent years, Jovan pivoted to being a treasure hunter who was featured on and widely mocked on Curse of Oak Island, because the man is insane.
POLITICS
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Larry Schweikart
Larry Schweikart
@LarrySchweikart
1) FL absentees, early voting:

*Dems as expected ("souls to the polls Sunday") had a good day and FINALLY take the early walk-in vote lead by 6,100 votes.

Rs total: 1,151,593
Ds total: 1,092,547

Rs +59,046 combined lead. This is very good for this point in the campaign.

2) At this point in 2016, Rs only led by 40,000. I could be mistaken but I think yesterday was the last day polls were open on Sunday, so the final "souls to the polls" Sunday.

3) As of yesterday, four red counties were yet to report. That would likely boost the lead back to 70k

4) I don't think the FL Rs in their wildest dreams expected to lead this late in the campaign.

5) Likewise in NV:
Clark (with its union "encouragement" for members turned out big yesterday and added net 6,000 voters.

However---big however---neither Washoe nor the rurals . . .

(5) contd. . . were open yesterday. My guesstimate is that would slice that number in half.

While this helped, the NV Ds are still looking at a significant--to potentially massive--shortfall from their 2016 numbers coming out of early voting.

6) Gotta make sure you compare days to days. Calendars and voting days differ.
POLITICS
Robert Saunders
Robert Saunders
@redhistorian
"3 million people are estimated not to have official photo ID, with ethnic minorities more at risk". They will "have to contact their council to confirm their ID if they want to vote"

This is shameful legislation, that does nothing to tackle the problems with UK elections.THREAD


There is no evidence in-person voter fraud is a problem, and it wd be near-impossible to organise on an effective scale. Campaign finance violations, digital disinformation & manipulation of postal voting are bigger issues, but these are crimes of the powerful, not the powerless.

In a democracy, anything that makes it harder to vote - in particular, anything that disadvantages one group of voters - should face an extremely high bar. Compulsory voter ID takes a hammer to 3 million legitimate voters (disproportionately poor & BAME) to crack an imaginary nut

If the government is concerned about the purity of elections, it should reflect on its own conduct. In 2019 it circulated doctored news footage of an opponent, disguised its twitter feed as a fake fact-checking site, and ran adverts so dishonest that even Facebook took them down.

Britain's electoral law largely predates the internet. There is little serious regulation of online campaigning or the cash that pays for it. That allows unscrupulous campaigners to ignore much of the legal framework erected since the C19th to guard against electoral misconduct.
POLITICS
legalnerd
legalnerd
@alegalnerd
1. @JonathanTurley
Trump has only been out of office and, therefore, no longer (purportedly) immunized from criminal prosecution for ~1 month. Also, because of R delay, Garland is still awaiting confirmation. Once Garland is AG, expect a thorough



2. investigation of Trump for inciting insurrection in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2383, together with other federal crimes. Once that investigation is completed, based on the information that is currently public, there is a good chance that Trump will be prosecuted for violating

3. 18 U.S.C. 2383, together with other federal crimes. Not absolutely guaranteed. But a very good chance. The only element of inciting insurrection that is open to credible dispute is Trump’s intent. Is there sufficient evidence that he intended his speech to incite imminent

4. lawlessness? As you know (or should know), criminal intent is invariably established by circumstantial evidence. That means prosecutors must analyze everything Trump did and said (and didn't do or say) before, during and after his incendiary speech.

5. That investigation takes time. Sometimes a lot of time to empanel a grand jury and begin issuing subpoenas and seeking warrants. The fact that Trump's previous crimes, including the 10 felonies outlined in Vol. II of Mueller's report, haven't been prosecuted is irrelevant.
POLITICS

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2/ Marketplace startups have done incredibly well over the first few decades of the internet, reinventing the way we shop for goods, but have been less successful services. It's bc services are complex, subjective, fragmented, and often in real life. Makes it hard

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4/ Each era has added more value than the last, and utilized technology innovations, from internet to social / "read/write web" to mobile. The "Unbundling Craigslist" era was particularly epic at generating startup ideas


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@franciscodeasis https://t.co/OuQaBRFPu7
Unfortunately the "This work includes the identification of viral sequences in bat samples, and has resulted in the isolation of three bat SARS-related coronaviruses that are now used as reagents to test therapeutics and vaccines." were BEFORE the


chimeric infectious clone grants were there.https://t.co/DAArwFkz6v is in 2017, Rs4231.
https://t.co/UgXygDjYbW is in 2016, RsSHC014 and RsWIV16.
https://t.co/krO69CsJ94 is in 2013, RsWIV1. notice that this is before the beginning of the project

starting in 2016. Also remember that they told about only 3 isolates/live viruses. RsSHC014 is a live infectious clone that is just as alive as those other "Isolates".

P.D. somehow is able to use funds that he have yet recieved yet, and send results and sequences from late 2019 back in time into 2015,2013 and 2016!

https://t.co/4wC7k1Lh54 Ref 3: Why ALL your pangolin samples were PCR negative? to avoid deep sequencing and accidentally reveal Paguma Larvata and Oryctolagus Cuniculus?
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A thing which I unironically and enthusiastically believe which is unpopular among smart people of my acquaintance: financial engineering has in the recent past and present contributed substantially to human welfare. We should hope to see more of it.

Maybe more geeks need to meet someone who says “My job is teleporting value across time and space.”

Financial engineering is sort of a squishy term. I don’t primarily mean payments infrastructure or financial rails, although both of those involve substantial engineering.

I mean more “We took a thing and performed some alchemy, and now have a new thing.”

Except instead of alchemy it is generally quite a bit of math, a huge amount of contract law and due diligence, often an impressive amount of ops work, and a dusting of technology that web devs would recognize as such.
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Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
ADI SHANKAR AND SRI TOTAKACHARYA

Adi Shankaracharya chose his disciple Totakacharya to be the first head of the Math at Joshimath.
The Narsingh Mandir (Mandir of Sri Narasimha) in Joshimath is one of the 108 Divyadesams and also the home of Badrinath during the winter months.


Totakacharya was earlier a boy named ‘Giri’ and a devout disciple of Adi Shankaracharya. Unlike others, he was not known to be an expert in Shastras but his dedication to his Guru was complete and he used to listen to His discourses with utmost faith and devotion.
@SriRamya21


One morning as Adi Shankara and his disciples were getting ready for the discourse, Giri was delayed. The other disciples urged their Guru to commence the lesson on Bramhsutra Bhashya telling him that Giri would anyway not be able to comprehend its deep meaning.
@RajeAiyer


Adi Shankar responded “नायमात्मा प्रवचनेन लभ्यो न मेधया” – Atman cannot be attained through discourses or mere intellect.
He,then, awakened the supreme knowledge in Giri.
Giri spontaneously composed: श्री शङ्करदेशिकाष्टकम् extolling his Guru’s grace.


Adi Shankaracharya granted sanyasa to Giri and gave him the name Totakacharya.
The story of how Giri became Totakacharya is a great example of the importance of faith and devotion in your Guru and not the mere knowledge of the Shastras.
@DetheEsha
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Antonio Garc\xeda Mart\xednez
Antonio García Martíne...
@antoniogm
Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.


The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.
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