A THREAD
This week, there has been talk about the bush war and what those involved in it fought for. Even the suggestion that the war wasn't fought for particular leaders to be presidents. Of course everyone has a right to their opinion, no matter how misguided. Here is mine.

Even in the early stages of the war, two ideologies had emerged. The first was that the war was a means to personal gain. As it became clearer that we would win, there were some that started talking about which houses in Kololo they would take and lives they would live...

The second was that power is a means to an end. That we were fighting for things much bigger than ourselves; freedom from oppression, the just application of the law and a Uganda that works for everyone. For those who subscribed to the first, the second was simply a PR front...

Once in power, these differences in ideology were not immediately obvious. The good will of Ugandans and their willingness to give the new government the benefit of doubt meant that corruption and personalisation of government didn't get called out as much as they should have...

Slowly but surely, those who thought of power and personal wealth as an end in itself started consolidating it, maligning those who disagreed and using the public support for change to secure their personal future at the expense of the very people they claimed to work for...

*** THREAD ***

Don't fall for the Disinformation about Voter Fraud

1/

I think we can all agree that the Trump administration has taken extraordinary steps to delay the inevitable conclusion that Trump lost the elections, period, end of story.

Attempted legal action and a whole host of other parlor tricks are great media fodder.

2/

But, ultimately, Trump will not prevail.

He just clearly didn't win.

But I want to talk to you about the ongoing Russian intelligence op to convince Americans that there's widespread voter fraud.

3/

Voter fraud in America is rare. Not just a little rare. EXCEEDINGLY rare.

Earlier this year, MIT election expert Charles Stewart III completed a 20 year study on election fraud.

Not only is it exceedingly rare, it is also HIGHLY prosecuted, because federal law

4/

enforcement AS WELL AS the intelligence community monitor elections very closely.

To quote The Hill's article, "There have been just over 1,200 cases of vote fraud of all forms, resulting in 1,100 criminal convictions, over the past 20 years.

5/

In defense of pollsters.https://t.co/9Lp6eEp8i0 information trending topic

Online media is ablaze with criticism—even denunciation—of the polling industry, with Trump having more success in the 2020 election than most pollsters predicted.

Georgia early voting took a few days off over the holidays, like most everything else, but it was back near general election levels on Monday

As we've expected from the start, this creates a challenge for comparing where we stand now v. the general election.
Day 11-13 were fairly good days for the GOP in Oct.; they run farther behind without those days, but we have no reason to think that's for a meaningful reason

I'll offer two ways of trying to account for this. It's not perfect, but there are many circumstances in which it still permits useful analysis. 1) Remove those same days of in-person voting (not mail) from the advanced vote in October; 2) A direct day-to-day comparison

That first comparison--removing ipev from GE holiday-equiv. --will be represented with a dotted line, shown here.
This isn't perfect: one could imagine, for ex., that someone who would have voted on day 12 will now vote on day 18, boosting later tallies. But still useful context

With that in mind, it still seems Democrats continue to show a lot of strength. Yesterday, they continued to run well ahead of the general election, including excluding holiday equiv. days

I was bombarded w/ messages about Trump’s claims about California water & a “certain little tiny fish,” the delta smelt, the topic of my dissertation & current book project. I wrote a short reaction piece but was unable to get it published as an oped. Here it is a thread 🧵 1/25

The Real Meaning of Trump’s “Bizarre” Claims About California Water Politics:

Trump’s recent behavior may be erratic, but his statements on California water politics have been remarkably consistent. We should acknowledge what he is doing and refuse to take the bait. 2/25

In one of his first interviews after being diagnosed with COVID-19, President Trump complained to Sean Hannity of Fox News that California has to “ration” water because it pours its supply into the sea to “take care of certain little tiny fish.” 3/25

The fish in question is the delta smelt, an endangered species that is found only in the northeastern part of San Francisco Bay, where it receives the flow of the mighty rivers that drain the Sierra Nevada. 4/25

This area, known locally as “the Delta,” is the lynchpin of California’s water system. 5/25

For anyone unsure about making @JoeBiden President & Commander-in-Chief, here's a real story about his excellent instincts as a manager.

On inauguration in 2009, @BarackObama gave Biden the biggest assignment of his life: Overseeing the hugest economic stimulus in US history.

With the economy in freefall, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided $787 billion for state/local support, infrastructure, energy independence - to put people back to work. The challenge was to spend that money quickly, but without fraud, waste, abuse. 2/11

President Obama made VP Biden responsible for overseeing the federal stimulus program. It's not common for a VP to be directly accountable for a high-stakes, high-risk government operation. But that was a signal of how important the effort was for the Administration. 3/11

To pull off a daunting mission, Biden did what a great manager should do: He hired a skilled and experienced team, set clear and measurable goals, delegated authority, invested significant time every week to the team & effort, and fostered a culture of accountability. 4/11

I saw it first-hand. As a Deputy CTO, I worked with the VP's ARRA oversight team on 3 elements - broadband stimulus (implemented by Dept of Commerce), smart grid upgrades (Dept of Energy), and electronic health records (HHS). 5/11

Here's what I'm watching in exit polls tonight (1/thread):

White voters without a college degree:

This group propelled Trump to the presidency in 2016, but now, Biden hopes to narrow the gap. Trump won them by 31 points in Michigan, 32 points in Pennsylvania and 28 points in Wisconsin. Trump needs to try to hold those margins again.

Seniors:

Trump won voters over 65 years old by 7 points in 2016, but amid a pandemic that is disproportionately killing older Americans, Biden may win them back in key states like Florida. Plus, Trump won White seniors by 19 points. Can Biden break even?

White women:

Pre-election polls suggest Trump is losing ground with this group, but he needs to stop the bleeding to have a fighting chance. A gaping gender gap could be fatal to Trump's reelection bid. Trump won White women by 9 points in 2016.

Black and Latino voters, especially men:

Trump has been pushing to make inroads with Black and Latino men, where even a small shift could help make up losses with other groups. Hillary Clinton won Black men by 69 points and Latino men by 31 points in 2016.

Dear Republican Party,

No, we will not be moving on. We reject your attempts to change the subject because we see them for what they are:

You're desperately trying to escape accountability for the role you played in #TrumpsInsurrection on Wednesday. // THREAD

As Thomas Paine said, “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”

And until you take responsibility, we do not trust you to do the job you were elected to do.

Lest anyone think I am only talking to Republicans in Congress, I am not. I am also pointing my fingers at every Republican in state legislatures as well.

For 4+ years, you either actively pushed lies spewed by Trump and his allies, or stayed silent in the face of those lies, which perhaps you now realize allowed them to take root and spread.

Taking only the most recent lie as an example -- Trump pushing the lie that he won the Nov. election in a landslide -- you all helped him push that lie, and that took root in tens of millions of Americans, and radicalized many of them as you bore witness to on Wednesday.

✨ Excited to launch:✨

~ WAVES OF INTEREST ~
Tracing Google Search Interest
in US Election Years

https://t.co/iF8VwZTgS7

w/ @recifs @destrysibley @googlenewsinit @albertocairo @smfrogers

🧵👇

When @smfrogers and @albertocairo reached out to do a project for the US elections, based on Google Trends data, my immediate thought was to make it *long-term*.

Google Trends covers 17 years of data by now!

What an opportunity to investigate how past US election years were different from this one, and which attention cycles can we observe within election years.

How did the topic landscape evolve?

And how has the pace of attention shifts changed?

After lots of analysis and experimentation, we put together the site as follows:

Opening with a smooth wavy line chart animation — an ambient introduction to the theme of waves, and trends — we dive right into the first central question:

"Which political topics trend in election years in general? And when?"

We show both a list of top rising topics in election years, as well as a detailed chart of how their search interest values unfolded over the years.

The claim that “the way [Trump] handled himself in the last 60 days" marks some sort of dramatic change in his actions and rhetoric is not credible. He has employed violent language & explicitly called his supporters to violence since his 2016 campaign./1

In 2019 he said, "I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad/"

Here's an article from _March 2016_, well before he got the nomination, about "all the times Trump has called for violence at his

In August 2016, he hinted at the possibility that his "Second Amendment" supporters might shoot Hillary Clinton: “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t

As the protests responding to the murder of George Floyd began, Trump said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," echoing a phrase used by

THREAD: In the aftermath of Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, far-right groups, pro-Trump militias, and white supremacists are revelling in the chaos caused, all while continuing to spread their propaganda & disinformation. Here is a small sampling:

The neo-fascist Proud Boys hate group bragged on social media about the fear they helped cause, while their leader (who was arrested on Jan. 5 and barred from DC) told them to “never stop fighting”

The NSC 131 white nationalist hate group—founded by former member of neo-Nazi terror group the Base—was present at the insurrection & later posted photos of stolen Capitol police gear while bragging about their role in storming the Capitol

By its campaign and conduct of the 2020 election, the ruling class ceased pretending to be part of a constitutional republic. By treating fellow Americans as inferiors through word and deed, its members renounced their common citizenship with us.

Eschewing persuasion, they set about compelling obedience to an openly manipulated election.

Thus did they burn their bridges to the rest of America as surely as did Cortéz when he burned the ships that had carried his troops to conquer the Aztec empire.

Henceforth, they must rule or ruin as the oligarchy they have become.

For four decades beginning in the mid-1960s, a class of rulers grew in America. They became ever more uniform socially and intellectually, ever more opposed to the rest of Americans, and ever more powerful.

This happened as government took upon itself the tasks of eliminating poverty and harmonizing the races, and as it controlled ever greater shares of the national income.

The stories from Bessborough are devastating.

One: “I was screaming with the pain, three days screaming with the pain and all you got was, ‘Oh you should have thought about this nine months ago.’ ‘You have got to suffer for your sins and you have got to put up with it.’ And the more you screamed the more she abused you.”

Another: The midwife “wouldn't give any painkilling. She was cutting the girls down below and just would tell them this is your punishment for what you have done and you are never doing this again.”

Another: “When my baby boy was six-seven weeks old, he was wrenched from my breast by one of the nuns whilst I was feeding him and taken away for adoption… I ran after the nun down the corridor, but there were two big doors that women weren’t allowed to go through… [1/2]

“…and so all I could do was bang on those doors.

“About an hour later the nun came back and told me that my baby was gone… At no time did I give my consent to my son’s adoption.”

#italydidit

Trump was way ahead of the Democrats on the election fraud. Shortly after his 2016 election, President Trump received intelligence that Barack Obama plotted with the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy, and Italian Prime Minister Renzi to overthrow the 2020 Trump Reelection

.

President Trump and cyber-security teams learned that, just before he left office in January 2017, Obama stole $400 million of U.S. taxpayer's money (14 pallets of cash) originally intended as payment for Iran, and redirected it to Prime Minister Renzi and the Rome Embassy.

U.S. Cyber-security teams ***tracked the exact routes of that cash*** The cash was distributed to several accounts and used to fund the electronic vote switching using Italian military satellites operated by Leonardo, an Italian aerospace, defense and security company.

William J. Lynn III is the CEO of Leonardo DRS, a U.S. subsidiary of Leonardo. He previously served under the Obama/Biden administration as Deputy Secretary of Defense & led the Department's efforts in cybersecurity & space strategy.

The election day operation was orchestrated by Stephan Serafini, a 20-year foreign service officer, and General Claudio Graziano, a board member of Leonardo.

You voted right? Good. This is a thread of nothing but some YouTube favorites of mine which you can have as a little treat.

A full 2000s era Tenacious D concert

Rodrigo y Gabriela tinydesk just killing it

Harry Styles Sledgehammer cover

Smashmouth’s All Star cover played entirely on melons

I've worked in IT for a few decades. The 2020 election is fraudulent. No one explained the core of the fraud, the configuration of the servers. I'm talking best practices
USB ports are disabled on every server and on many workstations to protect data and prevent intrusions.

Logs are reports of events on server functionality visible on screen or in print. Levels of users are defined w/ permissions. Administrators have full control over the server and software. They can read, edit, and write code or change internal server settings.

Next, there are Power Users. A Power User can't install new software. Others can read but can’t change anything. Access is severely limited. If the server is configured correctly their NAMES are visible.

Login are multifactor. Logs also show any intrusion attempts and can show the IP address (unique set of numbers identifying every computer) if the server is configured to do this. You can backtrack using the IP to identify the location of intruder.

Logs show backup schedules and data loss. Given the sensitivity of the data, assume a full backup. A couple of ways to do this. Another identical server, or the Cloud or RAID – Random Array of Inexpensive Disks. RAID disks located in the server itself capture pieces