BC POLITICS
Saved by @Alex1Powell

This analogy is unfair. In 04, exit polls suggested Kerry had won, and the Bush administration itself had helped fund exit polls in Ukraine that year & supported a Ukrainian election re-do based in part based on the exit polls. In 2020, exit polls favored Biden, not Trump. 1/

 2/ US State Dept commentary re the 2004 election in Ukraine and the discrepancy between the exit polls (which suggested a pro-West Yuschenko victory) and official results (which suggested a pro-Russia Yanukovych victory). https://t.co/dwWaTvL8aF
3/ The 2004 election in Ukraine was re-done and produced the opposite result, consistent with the exit polls.
4/ Exit polls in the US around the same time as Ukraine’s 2004 election suggested a solid Kerry victory. Voters had every reason to question why the Bush administration considered exit polls reliable in Ukraine but not in the US at the same time. https://t.co/SwUPeRnGtf
Discussion of Ohio 2004. 5/ https://t.co/PQ50iq5Dv0
Ohio’s Secretary of State that year, Ken Blackwell, was also a co-chair of Bush’s reelection campaign in Ohio. 6/ https://t.co/YGEhK65yxG
Ken Blackwell had also tried unsuccessfully to ban exit polls in Ohio in 2004. 7/ https://t.co/C7MXKm2H5K
Ken Blackwell is a fundamentalist Christian who opposes same sex marriage and abortion even in the case of rape or incest. 8/ https://t.co/xM8nil6vuQ
This discusses Blackwell’s position on abortion. 9/ https://t.co/pt1Tydenlq
Blackwell ran for Governor in 06. But on the morning of the election, EPluribus published proof that GOP operatives w/ ties to Blackwell had routed Ohio’s reported results in 04 to a server in TN owned by Smartech, which also hosted the Bush WH emails. 10/ https://t.co/RlyZtCaKCh
To be clear, this did not prove fraud. But it was shocking to some nonetheless. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but Blackwell then lost his race for Governor. 11/
Here’s a Wired article confirming what EPluribus proved in 2006, while noting that reported results are not the vote tallies themselves. 12 https://t.co/GWjBjEznYS
But a Republican-owned company named Triad also had remote access to at least some of the county tabulators in Ohio, which compiled precinct totals. (Triad provided voting equipment to about 1/2 of Ohio’s counties in 04.) 13/ https://t.co/vvzcGIS284
Triad is owned and run by the Rapp family, including Brett Rapp and Todd Rapp. I found this My Life profile for Todd Rapp, which says his interests include the Second Amendment and “pro-life.” 14/
Mike Connell, who built architecture that routed Ohio’s reported results to Smartech apparently thought abortion was murder. He died in a private plane crash b4 the trial in the case alleging the 04 election was rigged in favor of Bush, an evangelical. 15/ https://t.co/4lYuSXS3DN
None of this suffices to prove fraud. But if provides more than enough cause for concern, and a whole lot more than anything the current pro-Trump faction has come up with. 16/
This statement by @Spoonamore could not be corroborated, but also provided much legitimate cause for concern. 17/ https://t.co/YWua0MsAf8
When Connell was deposed, he acknowledged building the architecture that allowed Ohio’s results to be re-routed to Smartech in TN in the event the main server failed. He said he did not know why the Smartech server kicked in bc he saw no indication the main server had failed. 18/
Connell denied having knowledge of wrongdoing during his deposition, but was then subpoenaed for trial. He died before the trial. Spoonamore had been speaking with him in the interim period & thought his conscience was getting to him. A tragic event all around. 19/
Here’s a link to Connell’s deposition transcript via @TheBradBlog. 20/ https://t.co/arKBv6Tgom
I just noticed that an article about Connell and Ohio 2004 has been tagged by Twitter as potentially “spammy” and “unsafe”. This is the danger of equating Trump’s lies about 2020 w/ legitimate concerns about 2004. 21/
Here are just a few of Team Trump’s lies and misleads. 22/
More. 23/
And by the way, Ken Blackwell is trying to help Trump stay in office. He recently appeared on Steve Bannon’s war room podcast. 24/
Ken Blackwell also co-chairs the International Foundation for Electoral Systems w/ Tad DeVine who worked w/ Paul Manafort to help Pro-Russia Yanukovych make a come back after the 2004 election re-do. They promote “democracy” by assisting other countries w/ election tech. 🙄24/
Isn’t this rich? 25/ https://t.co/an5EU7ctlO
Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up. Again, Ken Blackwell chairs this group. 26/
Exit polls favoring Biden, not Trump. via @tdmsresearch 27/ https://t.co/rZFnvO1XuE
The greatest disparities [between exit polls and official results in 04] were concentrated in battleground states—particularly Ohio.” 28/

Quote from Harper’s article: https://t.co/WBkz0Kla5I
Article about DeVine working with Manafort to help the pro-Russia Yanukovych (discussed in post 1). 29/ https://t.co/xvGaE7RfWY
BTW, during the 2004 race between pro-Russia Yanukovych and pro-West Yuschenko, Yuschenko was poisoned with dioxin. According to the investigation, the poison was added to the rice which was served at the table."
30/ https://t.co/U2LR85AE0n
“Replying to the question if he believed the Russian leader Vladimir Putin was behind the poisoning Yushchenko replied: ‘I have an answer, but I cannot voice it.’” 31/

More from Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢

Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
Good news! The New York State Board of Elections voted yesterday to REJECT certification of ES&S’s ExpressVote XL all-in-one barcode ballot marking device (BMD), a glitchy & hackable touchscreen that ES&S has hoped officials would stupidly buy in lieu of pen and paper. 1/


I’m still trying to find out @NYSBOE’s reasoning, but I know one problem was that the ExpressVote XL runs on Windows 7 and can only mark ballots in English. If the XL were a person, it would be a MAGA. 2/

The XL has other problems. It runs the barcode “paper ballot” back under the printout AFTER the voter reviews it, which experts say means it could be maliciously programmed to eff with the barcode that is the only part of the “paper ballot” counted as your vote. 3/

Unfortunately, Philadelphia did choose the ES&S ExpressVote XL all-in-one ballot marking device (BMD), ignoring expert advice. I wrote about that unfortunate decision here in 2019. 4/

Here, for @NYRBooks, I also discuss problems involving the ES&S ExpressVote XL in PA in 2019. ES&S lobbyists had secretly donated to the two decision makers who then chose this system in Philly in lieu of #HandMarkedPaperBallots (pen & paper). 5/
SOCIETY
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
The top recommendation of experts & election-protection groups to protect the 2020 election had been to conduct robust manual election audits using a reliable paper trail. But Rs blocked the SAFE Act which wld have required them. -@jennycohn1 4 @nybooks 1/

2/ “America’s preeminent election-auditing expert, @philipbstark, ...told me a few weeks ago that “only a few jurisdictions currently audit elections in a way that has a good chance of catching and correcting wrong reported outcomes.“

3/ “‘That requires a trustworthy paper trail—primarily hand-marked paper ballots kept demonstrably secure throughout the election and the audit—and [what is known as] a risk-limiting audit using that paper trail,’” Stark said.

4/ Stark added, “‘to the best of my knowledge, even those states only audit a few contests in each election.’” 😳

5/ “A report by the National Conference of State Legislators confirms that just three states (Colorado, Rhode Island, and Virginia) require risk-limiting audits for one or more races.”
POLITICS
Advertisement
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
@AlexandraChalup "As MAGA World’s hopes for an election redo have slipped away, an equally improbable idea has begun to percolate among Donald Trump’s most bitterly disappointed followers: secession." 12/21/20 h/t @AlexandraChalup 1/

2/"Texas GOP chair Allen West floated the idea of a new union of 'law-abiding states,' and Texas state Rep. Kyle Biedermann—previously best known for dressing up as “gay Hitler”—pledged to file a bill in Austin to put the question of Texas secession to voters."

"Rep. Randy Weber also posted pro-secession material on his Facebook page, becoming the first official in Washington to advocate for disintegrating the U.S. Trump’s most reliable media supporters have likewise spread the idea nationally." 3/

"Rush Limbaugh, recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this month claimed the country was suddenly 'trending toward secession.'" 4/

"Actual secession in the U.S. remains, for the moment, something outside the realm of feasibility." 5/
GOVERNMENT
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
I lost faith in the US govt to tell me the truth re: election security when Comey & @EACgov testified that it wld be really hard to hack an election bc voting machines supposedly don't connect to the internet, & an expert explained on C-Span this was BS.1/

2/ Here is one of Halderman's C-span videos.

3/ It was like a death. Never in my life would I have thought my government would lie about something like this. Or, alternatively, be this incompetent. I spent the next three years feeling like I need to try to micromanage the situation bc I didn't trust them anymore.

4/ I know some people think it's bad for me to say this because it undermines voter confidence in elections. But guess what? I started out as an ordinary voter. This is what I found out. And I was horrified. There has been no reckoning for the lies.

5/ Reality Winner, who tried to bring a dose of reality to the situation, remains in prison. I do not trust our government re: election security. I just don't. They have never told us the full truth about 2016. They don't even try to be transparent.
ALL , ELECTIONINTEGRITY , ELECTIONS
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
“A recorded audio conversation appears to show Colorado District 4 Congressman Ken Buck pressuring an El Paso County GOP official to falsify election results in the State Senate District 10 race.”
— 5/18/20 #GOPElectionFraud 1/

h/t @GOPisComplicit 2/

More coverage. Wow. 3/

This. Read the Denver Post piece. It is brazen. 4/
CATEGORY PDFMAKERAPP GRAB THIS READWISEIO SAVE THREAD THREADER COMPILE SUMMARIZE

More from Politics

Kanekoa
Kanekoa
@KanekoaTheGreat
*The Evidence Collection*

There is overwhelming evidence of election fraud. Therefore it is the duty of the Executive, Legislative, & Judicial branches to throw out the fraudulent votes & to honor their oath to protect & defend the Constitution of the USA.🇺🇸🦅

A list below.🔻


1/ Navarro Report: The Immaculate Deception - Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities -

2/ Analysis of 3,000 U.S. counties shows Joe Biden received 5.6 % more votes in counties using Dominion Voting Systems (Video) -

3/ Antrim Michigan Dominion Voting Systems Forensics Report -

4/ Evidence Grows: ’20 Election Was Rigged -
POLITICS , ALL
Rich Weinstein
Rich Weinstein
@phillyrich1
For a few weeks I’ve been wondering about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and just how she emerged as a politico. Her path to Washington is shocking, at the very least. My first question was: What were her campaign positions BEFORE she became a national figure?

1/

So I went to her campaign website and took that web address and looked through the internet archive. When I went back to 2017, it was not her website, it belonged to the group "Brand New Congress."

2/

Here's what the web address https://t.co/Uhz2q4Dpll looks like now:

3/


Here's what the same web address looked like in late 2017:

4/


What's “Brand New Congress?” BNC is a group of Bernie Sanders staffers who got together, decided to make the 2018 midterms all about Bernie policies by taking his ideas & finding 400 Bernie carbon copies to dump into Congressional & other races, creating a 400 headed Bernie.

5/
POLITICS
Advertisement
Edwin Hayward
Edwin Hayward
@uk_domain_names
Handy guide for Dominic Raab and other Brexiteers, and for anyone keen to replace our EU trade with trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms...


You can't magic away the vast distances involved. Clue: we fly in only 1/192th of our trade compared to the amount that arrives via sea


But even if you invented a teleporter tomorrow, WTO terms are so bad, so stacked against us, that a no-deal Brexit will be a total economic disaster


And while the Brexiteers fantasise, real jobs are being lost, investments are drying up, companies are moving assets to the EU27 or redomiciling. All already happened and happening right now, not in some mythical


Of course, there are many, many myths that Brexiteers perpetuate that are total fiction. You've seen a couple of them already. The thread below busts a whole lot
POLITICS
Mangy Jay
Mangy Jay
@magi_jay
I don't think that "Democrats were cowards and couldn't stand up to McConnell" is the correct framing. Dems clearly made a political calculation. Plenty to potentially criticize about that calculation, but it was informed by factors unrelated to generalized "fear of republicans"

What we largely know now:
-There would never have been enough GOP votes to convict
-GOP had the power to hold up *all* Senate business & that means COVID relief (Dems would have been blamed for this hold up)
-Witnesses were uncooperative & would have had to have been subpoenaed

So I think the correct framing is that Democrats made a political calculation that the benefit of adding witnesses (who would not change the outcome) was not worth the political & moral cost of holding up COVID relief, as well as important confirmations. . . .

This calculation can be criticized on its own merits, but it's categorically different than just being scared of McConnell & the GOP.

For my own part, I think an error Democrats made w/r/t witnesses was not calling cooperative police officers who had been attacked that day. Just a few personal narratives from the police would have deeply embarrassed the GOP. That's a missed opportunity, in my view.
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

You May Also Like

Brianne Kimmel \U0001f4ac
Brianne Kimmel 💬...
@briannekimmel
Shocking fact: Millennial men are less likely to work than any other age and gender demographic in America.

Today, there are 500,000 young men missing from the U.S. workforce.

Research suggests video games & improved leisure tech plays a role in the problem. 👇 Thread:

Following the 2007 to 2009 recession, 25 to 34 year old men exited high school with fewer middle-skill job opportunities than years prior.

During this time, we saw an increased number of men living with parents & choosing unemployment over lower paying jobs.

It's estimated that 24M millennials live w/ their parents.

1 in 4 living in their parents’ home neither go to school nor work.

What's more surprising? 9 in 10 who lived with their parents a year ago are still living there w/ no plans to leave.

Economists are calling millennial men a lost generation.

According to economist David Dorn:

“If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point.”

Economists suggest this choosiness is a generational trait.

Forbes interview w/ a high school educated man:

"I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth."
“People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they
SOCIETY
Bharadwaj
Bharadwaj
@BharadwajSpeaks
Hinduism is a minority religion in Punjab.

During the Khalistan movement, the minority Hindus and Jains were subjected to several attacks. Hindu and Jain temples were frequently vandalized and desecrated. This thread documents a few instances.

Thread

Durgiana Mandir is one of the oldest temples of Amritsar. According to the regional Hindu tradition, the temple was built on the spot where Lava and Kusha bound Hanuman. The temple annually attracts millions of Hindus from all over the country.


Amristsar has a very ancient Hindu history.

According to the regional Hindu tradition recorded in the "Survey of Amritsar", Amritsar got its name from Amrit immersed by Lava and Kusha in a pond.


Durgiana Mandir was rebuilt in 1921.

It was used to house the Murtis of Vishnu and Durga which were thrown out from the Parikrama of Harmandir Sahib in 1905.

Because of its presence in Amritsar, it became a frequent target of radicals during the Khalistan movement.


In 1982, in what was a completely unprovoked attack, the Dal Khalsa "activists" threw a severed cow head inside Durgiana temple.
RELIGION
Advertisement
Caleb Porzio
Caleb Porzio
@calebporzio
🎉🎉 PHP 7.3 is here!

Here are the things I'm excited about.

🚂 Trailing commas in function/method calls!

This will certainly be a required styling choice for me. Same delightful benefits of trailing comma in multi-line PHP arrays, and JavaScript objects.


🧵 Less disgusting heredoc syntax!

Inlining heredoc strings in any way right now is grrrosssss. Now we get sensible capabilities. Everything that was wrong with it is now fixed!

(Ignore the bad syntax highlighting)


☠️ Finally, not-so-silent json_decode error detection!

This really sucked before, now it just sucks a bit less (who wants to pass a 4th param and pass 2 default params first? (helper function anybody?)


📜 Not horrible functions for getting the first and last item (or key) from an array!

Before you either strung a bunch of functions together or messed with internal array pointers. This is a much-needed improvement.
TECH
History Of Rajputana
History Of Rajputana
@KshatriyaItihas
**Thread on Bravery of Sikhs**
(I am forced to do this due to continuous hounding of Sikh Extremists since yesterday)

Rani Jindan Kaur, wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh had illegitimate relations with Lal Singh (PM of Ranjit Singh). Along with Lal Singh, she attacked Jammu, burnt - https://t.co/EfjAq59AyI


Hindu villages of Jasrota, caused rebellion in Jammu, attacked Kishtwar.

Ancestors of Raja Ranjit Singh, The Sansi Tribe used to give daughters as concubines to Jahangir.


The Ludhiana Political Agency (Later NW Fronties Prov) was formed by less than 4000 British soldiers who advanced from Delhi and reached Ludhiana, receiving submissions of all sikh chiefs along the way. The submission of the troops of Raja of Lahore (Ranjit Singh) at Ambala.

Dabistan a contemporary book on Sikh History tells us that Guru Hargobind broke Naina devi Idol Same source describes Guru Hargobind serving a eunuch
YarKhan. (ref was proudly shared by a sikh on twitter)
Gobind Singh followed Bahadur Shah to Deccan to fight for him.


In Zafarnama, Guru Gobind Singh states that the reason he was in conflict with the Hill Rajas was that while they were worshiping idols, while he was an idol-breaker.

And idiot Hindus place him along Maharana, Prithviraj and Shivaji as saviours of Dharma.
HISTORY
Eileen May
Eileen May
@suleskerry
Joanna Cherry:"Alex Salmond secured a concession that nothing in Scotland Act would preclude the people of Scotland from subsequently choosing an independent future. This is recorded in Hansard during second reading of Referendums (Scotland & Wales) Bill, May 21, 1997."

Donald Dewar said: “I should be the last to challenge the sovereignty of the people, or deny them the right to opt for any solution to the constitutional question they wished. For example, if they want to go for independence, I see no reason why they should not do so." JC

"In same debate Alex Salmond went on to emphasise that “… the Claim of Right referred to sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine a form of Govt best suited to their needs. It did not suggest sovereignty resides with English Members of Parliament." Joanna Cherry

Joanna Cherry: "Donald Dewar articulated the democratic norm later enshrined in the Edinburgh Agreement. His concession laid the foundation for the 2014 referendum in recognising the rights of Scots to choose whether to remain part of our voluntary union with England."

"I am wholly in agreement with view that we must find a legal & constitutional way to demonstrate that public opinion in Scotland has changed since 2014 referendum, in order for our independence to be internationally recognised & therefore meaningful." Joanna Cherry
SOCIETY