THREAD

1)
One year ago today, the U.S. military took out #Iran’s IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, the world’s No. 1 terrorist.

Don't listen to MSM. He was a ruthless killer loathed by people in Iran & across the Mid-East.

Please watch to the

2)
Iraqis dancing in the streets following news that Soleimani is no

3)
Poster of #Iran's terrorist-in-chief Qassem Soleimani being torn down in Gaza just

4)
A family in #Iran danced in their home after hearing about the “terrorist Soleimani's” death while chanting “Death to the Dictator,” in reference to

5)
Persian notes from inside Iran:
"We had a really joyous day after a very long time"
"Thank you, dear Trump"
"Long live Trump"
"Hats off to you, President Trump - From the people of Iran"

Credit: @IranNW

Patriots,
I'm hearing from multiple, credible sources about this Apple Update. I put out a request for information from fellow Patriots and received a response from someone in either France or Switzerland. They wrote a 6 page document

@ForLibrarians @indystar Here’s the defining image of Sen. Mike Braun’s shameful political career.

He’s sitting at a desk in the Capitol wearing a gray suit and blue mask. He’s holding a blue pen in his right hand, the tip hovering over a sheet of paper.

'Signing my objection to Arizona electors,' ...

@indystar Braun said on Twitter at 12:43 p.m. Wednesday.

You know, just a U.S. senator from Indiana throwing out the votes of millions of Americans like it’s no big deal. That’s apparently how Braun felt — that it’s all a meaningless, temporary joke to placate a sensitive loser ...

@indystar of a president and then everyone can move on. A few days earlier, Braun absurdly pretended there would be no consequences to taking formal action to overturn the November presidential election. What’d he call it? That’s right, pretended there would be no consequences to taking...

formal action to overturn the November presidential election. What’d he call it? That’s right, pretended there would be no consequences to taking formal action to overturn the November presidential election. What’d he call it? That’s right,

a 'protest vote.' Braun showed up ...

Note! I'm watching the news so I have the time to do this =D

Dear @HouseDemocrats:

HR 1 requires that the voter “have the option to mark his or her ballot by hand.”

Pls add the following for clarity: “For jurisdictions w/ in person voting, this option shall be provided to the voter at the polling place.” @RepTedLieu @katieporteroc 1/

Without this clarifying language, jurisdictions cld still force all in person voters to use risky touchscreen voting machines called ballot marking devices (BMDs), as long as vote by mail is also an option. That won’t suffice to protect election integrity & faith in elections. 2/

Unlike #HandMarkedPaperBallots (pen and paper), BMDs are vulnerable to electronic failure, screen freezes, miscalibration, disproportionate distribution (causing bottlenecks & long lines in suppressed areas), and hacking. 3/

4/ I also suggest that you supplement HR 1 to specify that BMDs “must not put votes into barcodes or QR codes.” This language is important because barcodes & QR codes are not transparent, further endangering integrity and confidence in elections.

5/ We are only beginning now to understand how these barcodes and QR code’s unnecessarily increase the attack surface for bad actors seeking to interfere in our elections. This is unacceptable & unnecessary.

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.”

They report, you decide.

Mike Pence to confirm Biden then leave the country, says report https://t.co/oIkb1SU6wX via @YahooNews

(1-6)
Some serious Political theatre went down today.

How many people worked out what was portrayed right in-front of them?

Watch how this plays out.
https://t.co/KkrXreeNof

(2-6) MP Catherine Cummings booed off stage.
Good luck getting any Dr’s on board.

(3-6) And the show continues to launch the Reignite Democracy Political Party.

(4-6) What a setup. Love the glove prop just ready to go.

(5-6) And here it is. We are coming for all the marginal seats.

How much is Jim Penman still involved behind the scenes?

So I've been reporting a story about how you'd fix the impeachment process. It doesn't work for removal, as currently designed. Impeachment was built for a political system without parties. It fails in a system with polarized parties.

The one time it functioned as intended, confusingly, was the time it didn't happen: Richard Nixon wasn't impeached! But the impeachment process, which came at the low ebb of party polarization in American history, convinced his party to force him to resign.

Would Republicans force Nixon to resign today?

Oh, you're cute. Thank you. I needed that.

The problem of impeachment is pretty simple: Presidents are leaders of parties. Parties are tied to the political fortunes of presidents. You're asking a party to basically wreck its immediate political future for the good of the system.

This doesn't just have the effect of making impeachment ineffective as a remedy. It's worse than that. It makes impeachment dangerous to the president's party, and gives them a reason to defend him and either normalize or minimize his crimes. As we are seeing right now.

Transition, 'inclusion' etc all have political ramifications. Instead of buying into the remarkably masculinist assumptions of queer theory that the dissolution of boundaries is always good, we should be examining them from the point of group power relations.

Transactivists try to conflate identifying as trans with gay marriage, in attempts to demonstrate the progressiveness of their cause, but the comparators are actually transracialism, trans-abledness, identifying as w/c etc.

The diagram shows the asymmetrical nature of such identifications. Identifying down is colonisation. Identifying up is impossible. The most you can do is improve your individual status relative to your class of origin, which leaves everyone else behind.

It also shows that the classes are occupied. If you identify as disabled, or as a woman, or as black, you are demanding access to spaces and facilities which were set aside for people based on a characteristic which you don't share.

How well tolerated this is gives us a clear insight into which oppressions are tolerated. We're rightly paying a lot more attention to racism, so Rachel Dolezal was fired by the NAACP. Other white women in the US who've tried this have been heavily criticised.

BIDEN LIED THREAD: The 46th President of the United States has a long and well-documented history of dishonesty. This thread includes just a few examples that #BidenLied.

1. NEWS: BREAKING 💥HUGE💥Pennsylvania Judge Rules 2020 PA Election Likely Unconstitutional – Trump Case “Likelihood to Succeed”

– Gives State Legislators Power to Choose Electors!

-Thread 11.28.20 https://t.co/8JKXyIrEFQ #Pennsylvania

1/ Republicans are suddenly trying to pretend that their rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett isn't about ACA repeal.

They are lying.

I've put together in one thread the story of their 10 year plan to get rid of the ACA. It all leads to this moment.

Please read the whole thing.

2/ From the start, Republicans were obsessed - I mean OBSESSED - with getting rid of the ACA. Nothing mattered more.

From 2010-2017, they tried to repeal all or part of the ACA 70 times. Their most high profile failure was, of course, in summer

3/ At first, Republicans' chanted "repeal and replace" - but they NEVER had a plan to replace it.

In 2017, with much fanfare, Paul Ryan unveiled the most serious replacement bill Republicans had ever offered. It ended health care for 23 million

4/ But after McCain's thumbs down in 2017, Republicans came up with a new plan. If voters wouldn't allow them to repeal the ACA through the elected branch of government, then they would go another way - the courts.

McConnell and Trump put together a devious, detailed plan.

5/ The plan began with tucking into the 2017 Trump tax bill a repeal of the individual mandate tax. Curiously, the bill left intact the mandate.

This was purposeful, bc the Supreme Court had upheld the ACA in 2012 based on the existence of the tax.

Is it just a coincidence that so many of those who told millions of voters that they would be better off outside the EU and ignored all warnings about the negative consequences of doing so, also tend to oppose wearing ‘muzzles’ and argue that covid is a lot of fuss about nothing?

How many of them never gave a flying fuck about what would happen to the U.K. economy, chanted ‘no deal!’ and ‘let’s go WTO!’ Yet now they suddenly care about the impact of lockdowns on jobs and businesses.

How many of them disparaged expertise when it ran contrary to their Brexit fantasies, and even called such experts ‘traitors’. Yet now they hail ‘the science’ (that agrees with them) to justify their sociopathic libertarianism?

How many revelled in the sadopopulist cruelty of ‘triggering lefties’, and ignored the anxieties, grief and despair of EU citizens forced to apply to live in their own homes? Yet now they worry about the ‘impact of lockdown on mental health.’

How many criticised the NHS & called for its privatisation, (yet still clapped for it when it suited them), who never said a word about the dangerous NHS staff shortages - compounded by Brexit? Yet now they worry about the death toll from cancer and postponed treatments etc

GEORGIA🚨

Negative votes & vote switches should *NEVER* happen on your CNN, ABC, & NBC live news feeds. This is according to the data scientist & programmers who presented at the State Senate hearings. They previously worked for the US Navy, the CIA, & Big 4 Accounting Firms.🔻

GEORGIA🚨

Elections are an additive process — you count the votes — and add them up. Votes should never be going down on live television. Votes should never be switching between candidates on live television. This is election fraud & it happened all across the nation.🔻

GEORGIA🚨

It happened last night.

774,723 - 742,323 = 32,400

32,400 votes subtracted from @Perduesenate live on ABC last night during the Senate Runoff.

GEORGIA🚨

2,130,535 - 2,125,535 = 5,000

32,400 votes subtracted from @Perduesenate live on ABC last night during the Senate Runoff.

FULL

Last talk about Securing Democracy at #enigma2021: @jackhcable speaking about "THE FULL STACK PROBLEM OF ELECTION

Let's imagine that elections use all the security measures security people have been advocating: risk-limiting audits, paper ballots, etc. Would people trust the elections more?

Jack would argue no. Most people don't understand this stuff and most of the claims people are making can't be disproven. And are massively bogus already.

Georgia did a full recount on paper ballots and it very much didn't stop people from doubting the election!

Are election security results in vain? The point of election security is to convince the loser they lost.

No! Have to focus on the whole stack, from election infrastructure to campaigns to people and mis/dis-informaton

One takeaway from the talk: the parts of the stack must work in tandem. Can't fight misinformation in a vacuum, but must build on other election security measures.

Goddamn it, Texas, I don't have time for this today.

Fine. Fine. A brief thread. (Yesterday I said I'd do a brief thread on the Michigan decision and finished an hour and a half later. Can't let this be that, today).

OK. Texas filed a motion for leave to file a complaint against PA, GA, MI and WI in the Supreme Court. Someone else can lawsplain to you how that works, or you can google the highlighted rules, but briefly, this is a thing they can theoretically do

There is a MASSIVE contradiction at the heart of this complaint, and its doomed for other reasons, too (standing, laches, abstention)

They have three theories for why they can sue:
1) Violation of the Electors Clause of the Constitution ("the Constitution gives state legislatures exclusive control of the manner of selecting electors and judicial action can't change it)
2) "Counties applied different rules"

And 3) "you didn't have as strict voter ID requirements as we'd like, and that's unconstitutional for reasons"

That's it. That's the case

THREAD: ELECTORAL COUNT ACT DAY.

Usually no one pays attention to Jan. 6 after a presidential election. But today the world is watching. Follow along, if you dare, as we watch Congress. We know the outcome: Joe Biden's win will be official. But it could be bumpy. 1/

What normally happens? A fairly boring, routine joint meeting of the Senate and House in which they open the electoral college votes from each state, in alphabetical order. Senators and House members can object, but it's usually not drawn out. 2/

The vice president presides as the the president of the Senate. There are two "tellers" from each House. The process goes through all 50 states and DC, and the winner is announced. All routine. Even Al Gore presided to announce his own loss in Jan 2001. 3/

But today, a few rogue Republicans plan to muck up the process to object to several states' votes. Not because they have any evidence of any problems--there isn't any. They are lying just because their preferred candidate lost. This is anti-democracy conduct. 4/

As @derektmuller explains in @nytimes, Dems objected to EC votes in 2001, 2005, and 2016. It takes an objection from a member of both Houses to move to a two hour debate. That happened in 2005. Big difference in context: the pres candidate had conceded. 5/

The death of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande brings to my mind the triumph of excellence in political leadership as well as rebellion against the political order.

A lot has been said about LKJ since he died yesterday and I hope only to contribute my perspective to enrich all said.

My emphasis with history has always been to draw out lessons relevant to the present, to show how trends repeat themselves and to show certain hypocritical contradictions within the present system.

Only few others qualify as well as LKJ to do all the three - I hope I do justice.

One area pundits have largely missed out in the Jakande story is the very beginning - both of his life and of his politics.

LKJ's parents were from Omu-Aran in present day Kwara State but he contributed more to Lagos than so many others - we will return to this subsequently.

LKJ was not originally a political ally of Awolowo - a number of elders were with Awo right from the very beginning but LKJ contributed politically to Awolowo at a crucial time of religious threat to the dominance of the Action Group (Awo's party) in the pre-Independence mid 50s.

A group had been formed in 1957 and named the National Muslim League headed by Alhaji R.A. Smith who had been very critical of Awolowo's AG as a Christian party and moved to align with the Northern People's Congress of Sir Ahmadu Bello.

The political threat to Awo was very real.