2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Beorhtnoth]

The referencing in Meier's book is thorough, and with the release of documents detailing the CIA MK Ultra programme, raw data does appear to support Meier's conclusions regarding Jonestown.

It is a fascinating book.

[N.E. Brigand]

One of the people counting ballots in the bogus "Cyber Ninjas" spectacle in Maricopa County is a former Arizona state legislator named Anthony Kern who lost his reelection last November ... in Maricopa County.

In other words, he's handling ballots cast in a race where he was a candidate.

Also he joined a lawsuit trying to get Mike Pence to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.

And he was in the crowd in D.C. on January 6.

[Sunsilver]

Wow. Just...WOW!!

[N.E. Brigand]

The conservatie media outlet Newsmax has issued a correction regarding the 2020 election.

Several months ago, they ran a lot of stories alleging that the voting machine company Dominion had somehow altered votes and specifically that this was done by a Dominion employee named Eric Coomer, who they claimed was a member of Antifa.

As a result, Coomer received death threats and went into hiding.

Now Newsmax admits it wasn't true.

[N.E. Brigand]

One of the people counting ballots in the bogus "Cyber Ninjas" spectacle in Maricopa County is a former Arizona state legislator named Anthony Kern who lost his reelection last November ... in Maricopa County.

In other words, he's handling ballots cast in a race where he was a candidate.

Also he joined a lawsuit trying to get Mike Pence to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.

And he was in the crowd in D.C. on January 6.

Also the Maricopa Co. recount process includes examining the ballots under ultraviolet light, apparently because of a QAnon conspiracy theory that claimed that Donald Trump secretly had the real ballots stamped with a watermark that can only be seen that way.

But there are in fact no watermarks, and I'm struggling to figure out what Cyber Ninjas (the company hired by the Arizona state legislature to conduct this recount) plan to do with that information. Will they that announced that none of the ballots in Maricopa Co. are genuine and that therefore the results from that county, which gave Joe Biden that state, should be thrown out?

[Frelga]

They moved past watermarks. It's bamboo now.

[N.E. Brigand]

An interesting column at Lawfare argues that charging the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack with "sedition" (18 U.S. Code § 2384) [1], ​even where apprpriate, risks putting the country on a slippery slope to tyranny. The author recommends that prosecutors instead use the narrower charge of "rebellion or insurrection" (18 U.S. Code § 2383) [2], although he notes there's not a lot of case law on the subject.

[1] "If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."

[2] "Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

- - - - - - - - - -
Not sure where to put this, so I'll just append it here since it concers some fellow travelers:

Here's a photo of Michigan state senator Mike Shirkey, leader of the state senate's Republican majority, at a Grand Rapids rally one year ago with William Null, one of the men charged a few months later in the plot to kidnap Michigan's governor, Gretchen Whitmer. The photo was posted online by Jason Howland, a right-wing Michigan activist who had called for Whitmer's arrest and who paticpated in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

- - - - - - - - - -
You may remember that in 2018, Floridians voted 65%-35% to allow former felons to vote, thus enfranchising some 1.4 million people. But then Florida's legislature passed a law newly disenfranchising more than half those people -- 774,000 of them -- by requiring them to pay any outstanding fines or fees before they could register. A federal court ruled that this law was unconstitutional, but by a 6-4 vote, the Republican-appointed judges on the 11th Circuit of Appeals voted that this modern day poll tax was just fine. Efforts were then made by activist groups, including one backed by former presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, to pay off these fines, but by then it was already September 2020. Also in a number of cases Florida was unable to say exactly how much the former felons owed.

(Biden lost to Trump in Florida by 371,000 votes, so it's possible this made the difference in that state.)

Well the Tampa Bay Times reports today that Florida police, at the request on Florida's governor Ron DeSantis, subsquently spent hundreds of hours investigating claims that the efforts to pay off the felons' fines constitued voter fraud. But the investigatoin found nothing.

Nonetheless, today De Santis, alleging that voter fraud is a serious danger, signed a law making it much harder to vote in Florida.

- - - - - - - - - -
Wow. Remember that op-ed in the Washington Post a few days before the insurrection by all ten living former U.S. Defense Secretaries? (Including even the two Trump appointees.) The one in which they jointly wrote that the military had no role to play in the peaceful transfer of power from the Trump administration to the Biden administration -- as an implicit admonition to Trump and his supporters to cut out their talk of overturning the election results? (It was previously noted about halfway through this thread, when many of us presumably thought the thread was nearly over.) Well it turns out that the op-ed was organized by Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who is now likely to lose her leadership in the GOP as a result of her public comments condemning Trump for the insurrection. (That said, Cheney like most Republicans spent years enabling the movement that came to fruition with Trump and his insurrection.)

- - - - - - - - - -
This is actually about the 2016 election, but who wants to bring back that discussion?

The Federal Election Commission is equally split between Democrats and Republicans.

A few years ago, Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in federal court for an election crime: in 2016, he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 not to disclose her past affair with Trump, and Cohen said he did so in order to affect the outcome of the 2016 election. That made the payment to Daniels a donation to the Trump campaign. Cohen said that he did this at Trump's direction. I don't think any reasonable person doubts that was the case.

And the FEC was petitioned to take action. But the Republicans on the FEC opposed that, and so it won't proceed.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Fanone letter.jpg (149.54 KiB) Viewed 4271 times

[N.E. Brigand]

Wow. Remember that op-ed in the Washington Post a few days before the insurrection by all ten living former U.S. Defense Secretaries? (Including even the two Trump appointees.) The one in which they jointly wrote that the military had no role to play in the peaceful transfer of power from the Trump administration to the Biden administration -- as an implicit admonition to Trump and his supporters to cut out their talk of overturning the election results? (It was previously noted about halfway through this thread, when many of us presumably thought the thread was nearly over.) Well it turns out that the op-ed was organized by Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who is now likely to lose her leadership in the GOP as a result of her public comments condemning Trump for the insurrection. (That said, Cheney like most Republicans spent years enabling the movement that came to fruition with Trump and his insurrection.)

For having dared to speak the truth about Donald Trump, Liz Cheney is likely to be replaced as the House Republican Conference Chair by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York, who, as Frelga notes above, appeared yesterday on the podcast of former Trump aide Steve Bannon.

Here's how Politico today weirdly describes Stefanik's rise:

"Rep. Elise Stefanik is on the verge of ascending to the House GOP's No. 3 spot thanks in part to a personal mission: boosting other Republican women"

Boosting other Republican women not named Liz Cheney, I guess.

Again, I have no particular fondness for Cheney, who launched her political career by betraying her own sister. There are lots of ironies to go around here.

[Frelga]

Of course we've been hearing about this since 2016 and I'll believe it when they run it, but here we are.

[Túrin Turambar]

"Former" is the key word in that Tweet.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Exactly. Even the few Trump opponents currently in office like Cheney are not willing to get on that train, and likely never will be.

[N.E. Brigand]

Wow. Remember that op-ed in the Washington Post a few days before the insurrection by all ten living former U.S. Defense Secretaries? (Including even the two Trump appointees.) The one in which they jointly wrote that the military had no role to play in the peaceful transfer of power from the Trump administration to the Biden administration -- as an implicit admonition to Trump and his supporters to cut out their talk of overturning the election results? (It was previously noted about halfway through this thread, when many of us presumably thought the thread was nearly over.) Well it turns out that the op-ed was organized by Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who is now likely to lose her leadership in the GOP as a result of her public comments condemning Trump for the insurrection. (That said, Cheney like most Republicans spent years enabling the movement that came to fruition with Trump and his insurrection.)

For having dared to speak the truth about Donald Trump, Liz Cheney is likely to be replaced as the House Republican Conference Chair by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York, who, as Frelga notes above, appeared yesterday on the podcast of former Trump aide Steve Bannon.

Here's how Politico today weirdly describes Stefanik's rise:

"Rep. Elise Stefanik is on the verge of ascending to the House GOP's No. 3 spot thanks in part to a personal mission: boosting other Republican women"

Boosting other Republican women not named Liz Cheney, I guess.

Again, I have no particular fondness for Cheney, who launched her political career by betraying her own sister. There are lots of ironies to go around here.

Earlier today, House Republicans voted to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position. Interestingly, it was a voice vote, which means that no one knows exactly how much she lost by. It also means that any member can later claim to have voted either way, as circumstances warrant. If Trump's popularity falls and Cheney's positions begin to seem prescient, a member who today voted to oust Cheney can claim to have supported her in this vote.

[Frelga]

File this one under "I'll believe it when I see it".
Manchin to support measured voting reform in lieu of sweeping Democratic proposal

"Former" is the key word in that Tweet.

Well, yes. There are now former Republicans, and Trumpists.

[N.E. Brigand]

Senator Mitt Romney today was asked to comment on the events of January 6, which some Republican members of the House of Representatives yesterday described as nothing more than "tourism" by the protesters who breached the Capitol. It's sad that it's still necessary to refute such ridiculous comments, but Romney summed it up clearly:

"Well, I was there. And what happened was a violent effort to interfere with and prevent the constitutional order of installing a new president, and as such it was an insurrection against the Constitution.”

[Sunsilver]

Wow. 'Tourism!' If tourists that badly behaved came to my country, I'd be closing the borders!

Oh wait, they're already closed...

Nice to hear some Republicans telling the truth!

[N.E. Brigand]

ABC News: Colorado man arrested in wife's murder now accused of voting for Trump in her name

During an interview with FBI agents in April, Barry Morphew allegedly confessed to submitting his wife's ballot, according to the affidavit.

"Just because I wanted Trump to win," he allegedly said, per a transcript of the conversation included in the affidavit. "I just thought, give him another vote."

"I figured all these other guys are cheating," he allegedly said, adding that his wife "was going to vote for Trump anyway," according to the affidavit.

[River]

So, having done signature verification in Colorado and thus been on the frontlines of detecting voter fraud in my state, my curiousity was piqued. From the article:

Suzanne Morphew, 49, who shared two daughters with her husband, disappeared on May 10, 2020, near the small mountain town of Salida, in Chaffee County. She has yet to be found.

So when the Chaffee County Clerk's Office received a voter ballot in the mail for the missing person in October, the county clerk reported the alleged voter fraud to authorities, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The ballot did not have the required signature, but was allegedly signed by Barry Morphew on the witness' signature line on Oct. 15, according to the affidavit.

He got caught because the system worked.

[N.E. Brigand]

Former Acting Defense Secretary Christoper Miller, who served in that role from November 9th through the end of the Trump administration, last week said this to Congress about the events of January 6th:

"I want to remind you and the American public that during that time there was irresponsible commentary by the media about a possible military coup."

But today Axios reports that

"Miller told associates he had three goals for the final weeks of the Trump administration: #1: No major war. #2: No military coup. #3: No troops fighting citizens on the streets."

Emphasis mine. Would he describe himself as "irresponsible"?

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Also according to that Axios report on Trump's interactions with the military throughout his presidency, it was on Nov. 9 that Trump, though a trusted aide, directed that the Dept. of Defense should completely withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, all African nations, and Germany before he left office. I actually think that one of Trump's few good qualities are his peacenik instincts. But not only was he wildly inconsistent in that position -- remember how he mused aloud as a candidate that there was no point in the U.S. having nuclear weapons if we weren't going to use them? -- but he postponed all but one U.S. withdrawal effort until the end of his presidency, when he wanted them rushed through, and in the one previous withdrawal during his term, in Syrian Kurdistan, he completely through U.S. allies under the bus, leaving them at the mercy of the invading Turkish army with no notice.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This could easily go in the "Challenges Ahead" thread, since it shows the challenges Biden and the Democrats face in dealing with a Republican Party that complains about like of bipartisanship out of one side of its collective mouth, and refuses to negotiate in good faith out of the other side of its mouth. But since it deals with the events of January 6 and then has been discussed in this thread I will put it here.

To give some background, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposed a bipartisan commission to examine what happened on January 6, modeled on the 9/11 commission. GOP leaders pushed back against her original suggestion, and made several demands. Then Homeland Security Committee Chairman Benny Thompson negotiated a bipartisan deal with the ranking member, John Katko, who was authorized by Minority Leader McCarthy to negotiate on behalf of the GOP. The agreement includes all of the things that McCarthy originally insisted be included. However, after Katko and Thompson reached the deal, McCarthy refused to endorse it, and is now actively encouraging his caucus to vote against. Then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also came out against the deal. The House is voting on the legislation today, and there are as many as 40 GOP members that might vote in favor. Then it will go to the Senate, where it will likely either fail or be significantly changed, as "moderate" Susan Collins has already stated that she won't vote for it without changes.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics ... index.html