An orders list will be coming out Mon. Per Lin: likely a ruling in the PA case with GA and MI granted cert with/reversal and remand to follow law in PA case. Then we move on to another Conference next Friday with those orders issued Mon Mar 1st.🙏

The Esper firing sums up well the extremely frustrating and toxic dynamic between Trump's political maneuvers and governing strategy and his fanbase.

Step 1: There is a decisive moment, crisis, or major opportunity

Step 2: Trump talks big, takes photo-ops, and generates extreme reactions from his opponents.

Step 3: Trum fails to take action, sends mixed signals, and generally bungles the opportunity.

Step 4: Trump lashes out at the people who gave him bad advice ... and then talks big again.

Step 5: Trump's fans announce that we're about to "see the real Trump," "the gloves are off," "he'll go full bore now," etc.

Rinse, repeat.

I can think of countless examples that fit this patter: John Bolton and Iran, Esper and the BLM riots, reforming legal immigration, building The Wall, removing troops from Afghanistan, Covid stimulus checks...

Seemingly, every consequential issue fits this pattern.

So we're left w/ this situation in which Trump, at least rhetorically, still stands as the candidate of immigration restriction, nationalism, ending wars, law and order, traditional values, etc. Yet he had clear opportunities to act decisively on all of these matters and didn't.

31 December 2020 #MAGAanalysis #Overturn

Comments on @OptimisticCon's Article - Part 3

As I forgot to give the link to the article, yesterday, let's get that covered right

Conservatives love to complain that everyone is against them: professors, journalists, intelligence officers, social media companies, and so on.

I used to as well until I considered that maybe having problems with everyone else isn't their fault, it's yours.

I was reminded of that realization when I read this important NYT article about how Facebook keeps weakening news source quality controls because conservative content gets disproportionately effected by them.

Unfortunately, this great piece of reporting by @MikeIsaac, @sheeraf, & @kevinroose didn't mention the greatest challenge in AI news signal processing: Humans can barely separate conservative & far-right content. Which means computers can't either.

This techno-semiotic conundrum originates from the fact that in the US, because there is no moderate conservative tradition, the gravitational center of the right is far removed from the political center.

More plainly, this means that almost all the energy and organizing on the right exists on the far right.

This is not the case on the US left where there is a strong moderate tradition capable of organization and force projection. Ask Bernie Sanders if you disbelieve.

POLITICS AS CELEBRITY

I knew this crap was coming sooner or later. People are suffering & these mafuckas out here doing sorority photo shoots. Miss me w/ this bullshit. More of the same. Stop treating politics like its a damn elite club & path 2

Stop playing games w/people's lives & maybe then you wouldn't have so many people suffering. I'm going to file this bullshit next to Michelle Obama's $8,000 Versace dress & $4,000 Balenciaga boots. This shit is

Remember when Barack Obama 1st ran for president & Mrs. Obama was heralded as "The J. Crew" 1st Lady who shopped at Target was just like every other American? That bullshit was a lie. Balenciaga & Versace Michelle is who she always was, but she masked it 2 aid her husband's rise.

Now Kamala Harris, like Michelle Obama, out here w/a Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake" tone deafness while Americans are suffering, the Capitol is burning , a pandemic is raging, people are dying & a civil war is brewing, but Kamala skee-weeing on Vogue covers in pink & green-

like she back on the yard at Howard about to do her probate show. Meanwhile, the Obamas globetrotting w/billionaires, gotta half Bil Netflix deal & hv mansions in Chicago, DC & Marthas Vineyard. Nevermind how they got this entire life of wealth & celebrity was through politics &

Alright, I'm going to explain this one more time because I keep getting tweets like "people who vote for politicians who let them die of hypothermia deserve to die of hypothermia."

The people who voted red in Texas are, by and large, relatively fine right now. Yes, the storm has hurt them but the storm was going to hurt everyone.

But. They're either rich enough that *their* power wasn't cut off or rural enough that they have fireplaces and wood and wells.

Those millions without power are in places like Dallas county and Tarrant county and Harris county, I.e., the urban places that have the highest concentration of blue voters.

So it's not "(all/most) people voted for hypothermia and now they will fittingly die of hypothermia".

It's "(certain) people voted for the folks in cities to die of hypothermia, and they are, while the aforementioned voters are safe and dry and relatively comfortable."

Well, gosh, why don't those voters *do something* rather than passively being killed??

Do you know how many people live in Harris county? 4 million. Do you know how many ballot drop-off boxes they were allocated last election? 1.

1 box for 4 million people.

Let's give the devil his due: he's tireless. He has an iron constitution. . He wasn't just a politician; he was a desperate man, and from his desperation he drew the power to hypnotize vast crowds. 1/

He was never anything less than a finisher, which is what made him dangerous, especially down the stretch in an election. Even today, he couldn't do anything but try to make the sale, even to people who supposedly loved him. 2/

Even today, he couldn't think of anything to say to them but the classic kiss-off of a bitter man: "Have a good life." 3/

I give the devil his due in order to give the other character in this historic drama his due -- the character whose virtues his opponent could never understand. 4/

He is, after all, an old man. He did, after all, have a speech impediment. He failed, after all , in two previous runs for the presidency, the first time for ignominious reasons. 5/

1. "They're leaving! They're leaving!"" yell seditionist as they watch House members fleeing the floor through the glass doors the only thing (+ some under-armed officers + office furniture" that protected our elected REPs (same ballot as Trump, each & everyone

@McConnellPress

2. of them felt so inclined towards martyrdom and/or possessed the weapons (Jesus, what if they'd has a grenade & guess what, in America, yes, you can come up w functional equivalents of that bc barring people from them is a betrayal of freedom so great we must simply acquiesce

3. their eventual death tolls. One functional "freedom grenade" down that hallway, tossed w ease through a hole in the glass door, could have easily hit anyone fleeing.Unless it was Mo Brooks, MTG, or one of their well-known crazy boosters, here's a thing @LeaderMcConnell ought

4. to reflect upon as he makes his CRITCAL pivot decision, which he could rally 17 people & start a fight for control of the party that rest of the country will help him with,EVEN AFTER ALL THE SHIT HE'S DONE TO PEOPLE, YES, THE REST OF THE COUNTRY WOULD HELP HIM IF HE WAS TO

5. RALLY 17 SENATORS FOR IMPEACHMENT, he'd find his whole 🌎awakened. And Mitch, as far as I understand it, you could do it anonymously!! How much would THAT fuck w them?? How great would it be, for the 1st time in 5 yrs, to be the one w power- you LOVE power! Think of the FUN!

Thread – Victims of Wokeness

1. The Cancel Culture takes scalps. We’ve seen many examples this year. It’s the real why the likes of Vaseline, the NFL, MLB, the NBA, and other large corporations/business have taken the knee to the mob.

1. I am thankful that at 12pm 1/20 the powers of the prez will be removed from the most dangerous person who has ever held them. I am thankful for the many wonderful fellow Americans from across the spectrum that joined me to help get him out & save America from authoritarianism

2. I am thankful for each & every person that had to make a hard decision, stay silent & normalize this man & his party's actions- which mirror so closely actions taken by other leaders & parties as they moved to consolidate power at the expense of democracy (as documented so

3. clearly by @anneapplebaum's book Twilight of Democracy) bc their lock on power is threatened. Those of us that took a holistic look at events in the U.S., the scope of the Right's propaganda network, and the lengths to which GOP influencers (electeds & media) were willing to

4. go to manipulate public opinion and knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were facing a five alarm fire. Trump, as dumb & self-sabotaging as he is, does one thing perfectly well- manipulate public opinion. Trump fully understands that public opinion flows from the top-down,

5. and that when you control the information diet of a group of people, as the Right is controlled, that manipulation level reaches profound levels. By the time Trump came down the golden escalator in May of 2015- the Republican electorate was primed for someone like him to come

Based on how President Trump has handled things over the past four years, I think he leveraged the China virus to quietly take out the Deep State - adapted the plans. /1

I think he used Covid to remove Deep Staters under the guise of illness and will continue to do so.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of them get a lethal injection and they call it a vaccine gone wrong. /2

You may wonder at the ethics of all this but consider the drastic nature of the infiltration of our country. /3

It bothers me that personal freedom is restricted but then I think to myself, this is a good way to get to people, when they don't have the freedom to move. /4

It is useful for President Trump that his political enemies, (that is the people who wanted to use the illness against him), are now backed into a corner, because everyone's convinced that things are really bad and getting worse. /5

CHINA❤️GEORGIA
GEORGIA❤️CHINA

Thread – Questions from the Net for Democrats

1. Now that a false flag operation at the Capitol building provided cover for the Uniparty to certify The Hologram as the “winner” of the stolen election, an enterprising soul has some questions for the Left.

Thread – Does the Buck Really Stop with Mike Pence?

1. A pal sent me this Facebook post by “Rod D. Martin.” I pass it along as food for thought in the frenzy leading up to the “great expectations” of 6 January.

2.

We absolutely must resist the massive fraud which has just been perpetrated on our country. But at the same time, we must not grasp at hopes which are not hope.

3. Some believe that the Constitution grants Vice President Mike Pence almost magical powers to overturn the improperly certified election "results" from the stolen swing states. They base this on just one clause, plus a lot of internet rumor.

4. This is the relevant sentence, from the 12th Amendment: "The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted."

5. The [various] theories being articulated freight this clause with a shocking amount of weight. Where, for instance, does this clause state that Mike Pence's rulings are unappealable?

1/ A Short Thread About Civility and Calling Politicians Liars.

Nice people are sometimes uncomfortable that I call some politicians "liar". And I don't apologize for it.

But I don't call every politician "liar". Only the ones who deliberately tell provable lies and do so

2/ repeatedly. A lie is different from an accidental misstatement. For example, when @michaelaglasgo lied about her church's carbon tax, it could have been a genuine mistake. But she doubled down by telling other lies. And has since been caught in more.

#cdnpoli #abpoli #ableg

3/ When @KayceeMaduYEG is caught lying, he doesn't do the right thing. He just plows ahead. As if lying doesn't matter.

So which is more uncivil: calling out people who lie a lot OR being in a position of public trust and lying to people in the first place?

4/ I think it's important that once a politician is found to lie repeatedly, like @jkenney , we never forget that anything they say could be a lie. We need to always weigh it. Look for lies of omission.

Civil discourse cannot survive if politicians lie all the time. It can't.

5/ So as rude as it might be, when members of @UCPCaucus tell lies, we should be calling them "liar" every time. As long as they think they're getting away with it, they won't stop. So shame them.

If the politician is a lawyer, report their behaviour to the Law Society.

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.

Thread – The Real Joe

1. Dementia Joe is a walking gaffe machine, prevaricator, plagiarizer, and an all-around liar, as ANYONE paying attention at all knows. Even Dementiacrat voters know that, but then they are sheep and will vote for him regardless.

NEW w/@akarl_smith: Republicans see an opportunity to begin winning back the suburban voters they lost under Donald Trump's presidency by capitalizing on widespread frustration with pandemic life and directing it at an old enemy: Teachers

New NRCC Tom Emmer told staff as soon as he took over to go all in on schools: "It's the teachers unions that want to keep the schools closed. Dems are ignoring the science, and they're standing with their special-interest donors instead of the students."

Going after public sector unions is a throwback to the last time the GOP was locked out of power in DC in 2009/2010 and it's a message that every faction in the party can get behind -- with the potential for crossover appeal to indies and some Dems.

The politics have changed since circa 2009, when the school reform movement was at its height w/ broad bipartisan support, including from the Obama admin.

Now, support for unions is at a nearly 20-year high and teachers unions favorability has gone up a bit during Covid, BUT...

But the frustration over shuttered schools is real and Republicans think they can channel that anger into a grassroots uprising to drive a wedge between suburban voters and the Democratic Party.

"This is the suburban-parent revolt," said Corry Bliss.