A Not-So-Minor Issue of Distinguishing Rain From Territorial Urine Markings
Arlington National Cemetery 15 December 2018 Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) [Public Domain]
But why would unsavory piddlers seek to wee upon normal, salt-of-the-earth folks in the first place?
There is, of course, the dominance of such an act, of exerting a humiliating degree of control often rising to the level of fetish. But there is also the more instinctual, animalistic quality of marking territory. Spray marking is multi-functional in marking one’s territory, but the main point is to get a response from others: Potential mates respond, rivals respond, allies respond. That response shows itself in a Flehmen Response, which varies in different animals but usually involves a baring of teeth and other posturing that, while looking menacing and aggressive, is also a function of the animal trying get its sensory ability and brain to link up:
The Flehmen Response is supposed to help move compounds such as pheromones, hormones, and others into the vomeronasal organ. The vomeronasal organ, or VNO, is a neat little structure that sits under the floor of the nasal cavity. Most animals have this, and humans seem to have a vestigial (functionless) one. In the horse access to the VNO is from a duct in the nasal passages (in other species the opening is at the roof of the mouth).
The VNO’s interior lining is like a mucous membrane with a good deal of blood supply as well as sensory neurons. Once the little compounds reach the inside of the VNO, signals are sent to other parts of the brain. Now, even though all this seems like it should be part of the smell, or olfactory, system, actually the VNO sends signals on a completely different route called the “accessory olfactory system.”
The main olfactory system helps us recognize odors and say, “Oh, yes, that’s vanilla, and it makes me think of cookies.” But the accessory olfactory system doesn’t require the horse to actively recognize a smell or compound. Rather, it signals what are the oldest parts of the brain, the amygdala and hypothalamus, to stimulate more instinctive, emotional reactions or behaviors, such as fear or mating interest, and even elicit physiological changes.
Stimulating fear or mating interest is very on brand for American politics in the Year of Our Lord 2020. Scaring folks into action, or trying to reproduce your political philosophy in others, seems to be the modus operandi. So as the Trump campaign continues to micturate all over all fact, logic, and reason in response to the 2020 election, let’s be honest as to the reasons why: this election fraud narrative is territorial pissing. Coming from the folks constantly claiming “the storm” is coming, the warmth and smell should clue us into the fact this isn’t rain they are brining.
The biggest indication that this rain shower is anything but natural is the unserious efforts of Team Trump. The legal triumvirate of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis is not the “Elite strike force team” laughably claimed in a recent presser, but rather the gathering of two has-beens and a never-was. Rudy, who was once a legitimately noted prosecutor before becoming mayor of NYC, was last in a courtroom as lead counsel during the Bush administration — George Herbert Walker Bush, that is. Sidney Powell has a distinguished career as both a prosecutor and appellate lawyer, but anyone paying attention would notice that for the last couple of years her main occupation has been the defense of Recep Erdoğan employee Michael Flynn and such a deep immersion into conspiracy theories and QAnon circles that she can no longer can tell which way is up. Then there is Jenna Ellis, who, in the short span of 4 years, has gone from calling Trump an idiot, to defending him to her own career and reputation’s death, to publicly commenting on Frank Luntz’s manhood.
Ellis’s history gives away the game. Writing in 2016, she said:
“I could spend a full-time job just responding to the ridiculously illogical, inconsistent, and blatantly stupid arguments supporting Trump,” she wrote in March 2016. “But here’s the thing: his supporters DON’T CARE about facts or logic. They aren’t seeking truth. Trump probably could shoot someone in the middle of NYC and not lose support. And this is the cumulative reason why this nation is in such terrible shape: We don’t have truth seekers; we have narcissists.”
But by this past Wednesday, she responded to those comments thusly:
It’s no secret that I did not support Donald Trump early in the primary process in 2015, like many others who didn’t know him, and I’ve always been straightforward with my opinions and I’ve always admitted when my opinion changes. I am glad to have learned that I was completely wrong about Trump back then and I’ve said that over and over publicly, as I saw him keeping his promises, and then eventually getting to know him personally. I appreciate (CNN’s) KFILE showing clearly through past statements that I think for myself, and that my mind was changed based on fact and personal knowledge. President Trump is a sincere Christian, the best president in modern history, and made and kept his promises to the American people. I am proud to stand with him and his goals for the future of this country and all of its citizens.
Call me cynical, but I suspect having known the truth in 2016, otherwise unknown Jenna Ellis, Esq., saw the money train leaving the station and decided to jump on. But she didn’t stop to think about where those tracks might lead. So here she is, third chair for the Giuliani, Powell, and Ellis clown show that is currently being laughed out of every courtroom they enter. To say no self-respecting lawyer would touch this is an understatement. Rudy utterly embarrassed himself in open court, and just in case anyone doubted it, the Republican-approved judge ordered the audio publicly released while writing an opinion that even folks who don’t read legalese can tell is scathing:
In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs (collectively, the “Plaintiffs”) seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all corners – from Greene County to Pike County, and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens. That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant Defendants’ motions and dismiss Plaintiffs’ action with prejudice.
That is the “Introduction” portion of the 37-page ruling, and it gets less gentle from there.
The other lawsuits are going just as well or even worse. Not to be out down by the masterclass in buffoonery Giuliani, Powell, and Ellis were putting on, another Trump “celebrity” lawyer in the person of Lin Wood managed to file an affidavit about voter fraud in Michigan citing municipalities that where not only in Wayne County of the great state of Michigan, but were actually located in Minnesota. Beyond the courtroom, trying to threaten the Georgia Secretary of State resulted in him telling the Trump faithful to stick it as he oversaw a recount of the Peach State that confirmed a relatively comfortable Biden win. Somewhat lost in the recount to Team Trump was that if there was malfeasance in the Dominion vote counting system it would have showed up as a discrepancies in the hand recount. One could guess how that turned out, or you could just note the reaction, or lack thereof to Trump once again not winning Georgia. Powell, not taking this well, took to the airwaves of OANN to insist her coming legal reckoning would be “Biblical” and insinuating that anyone not on board with her forthcoming victory, up to and including Republican Governor of Georgia Brain Kemp, was paid off by Dominion and other deep state forces, a rant so far off the deep end that Giuliani and Ellis decided to break up the self-proclaimed elite strike force:
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) November 22, 2020
Oh well, they will always have the famous presser where Ellis declared them the elite strike force as Rudy’s hair dye ran down his jowls and Powell ranted and raved about Hugo Chavez’s influence, and George Soros, and communists, and evidence that they really truly had but it was too dangerous to reveal just yet, and Wayne County, and observers, and…
You know what, to hell with this.
If you need it explained to you in such minute, point-by-point detail that these people are Cuckoo For Cocoa Puffs, you have a Biblical “you” problem. They are not bringing facts, they are not working to better the system and laws to uphold truth, justice, and the American way, and they sure don’t care about anything other than what they want. Giuliani, Powell, Ellis, and others on behalf of Donald Trump are peeing all down the leg of America, and claiming it is rain. They are doing it expressly to see what the reaction will be. They know they can’t win, but they want to get that Flehmen Response out of people. The folks who want to fight and oppose them just fuel their victimhood and political martyrdom for the forthcoming Lost Cause of Trump. The folks who kowtow to this lunacy show they can be steamrolled again and again. Most importantly, all this territorial whizzing will gather the folks who can help propagate their variant of Trumpism into a continuing base of support and funding. Those who go along with this nonsense are true believers in every sense of the term. Meaning they will gladly pay for the privilege of having their leg discharged upon.
To hell with trinity of idiocy that is Giuliani, Powell, and Ellis…and anyone else going along with this charade. It is not the American people’s responsibility to scratch the insane itches of unworthy grifters. You want the American people to hear you out? Fine. You want to bring court cases? Great. That is your right. But after 30 plus court cases and counting, and a media barrage that doesn’t match what you are alleging in filings and after having the entire legal community laughing at your ineptness, your right to be heard in the arena of ideas has to be further justified. The “massive election fraud” case has been heard, both in court and by the American people, and been found wanting. Laughably wanting. Those true believers who want to spew their rancid scent all over the place, hoping to stake out a permanent habitat for themselves and like-minded believers to gather in fear and breed the next generation of conspiracy theorists, should be called out for what they’re doing. This is marking out territory that doesn’t have to conform to laws, or logic, or even the rest of civilized American society because the truth is unacceptable to them and the reality too hard. They can prattle on and on about the forthcoming “storm” but really all they are doing is masturbatory self-affirming nonsense. Fire hosing that nonsense over as wide an area as possible doesn’t make it any more so. It just makes everyone a whole bunch wetter. And smellier.
And it sure as hell ain’t rain.
Agreed, 500 links of evidence isn’t really impressive if none of that evidence is admissable in court.Report
Most of it is admissible in court, because it’s evidence. Sworn statements by witnesses are not hearsay.
And then there’s analysis of election statistics by professionals. For example, a Princeton math and physics PhD, who is a professor at Williams College (the #1 ranked liberal arts college in the US) and who publishes books on statistics, submitted his analysis of Pennsylvania.
And he just looked at those two types of election fraud. When you dump the other party’s ballots in a landfill instead of counting them, it’s not really an election, and the other party need not abide by it.
Or more to the point, if Biden was really winning, why was he having to commit so much election fraud?Report
A statement made outside of court, offered for the truth of the matter therein, is hearsay. Sworn statements ARE hearsay. They may be admissible under certain exceptions to the hearsay rule. But they’re hearsay.Report
Not necessarily, I think. The affidavits would be hearsay regarding the contained allegation of a particular person committing a particular fraud, or a particular procedure that was illegal or invalid. But they are evidence that election witnesses are saying they witnessed instances of fraud or illegal or invalid procedures.
So when the defense is claiming “No one says they saw any evidence of fraud”, all these affidavits say that, in fact, people did say they saw evidence of fraud. That should let a case move forward, where such witnesses can be deposed.Report
Let me put it this way, of those 500 links, what if any was
A) Presented to the court, and
B) Found admissible under even the most lenient of standards?
AFAICT, the Crack Team of Lawyers* for Trump have presented very little of said evidence to the courts, and hardly any of that has made it past a judge.
*And by that, I mean Team of Lawyers on CrackReport
By that reasoning, we can be certain that Bill Cosby is innocent, too, because all the early cases against him were thrown out.Report
I guess that’s true. I guess in 30 years you can feel vindicated that Trump actually won the election, and maybe if he’s a head in a jar, he can try to claim his 2nd term.Report
I think “kraken” is German for “tons of crack”.Report
Dude, you’re arguing with a practicing attorney. And Em is a really good attorney.Report
I argue law with a highly experienced, borderline-OCD trial attorney every day. He loved putting a jury in a box.Report
I’m sure you do argue, with a lot of people. You’re still 100% wrong here.Report
Everyday I spar with a Black Belt!*
Doesn’t mean I ever win those matches, or even come close, or really show improvement, but still I spar!
*I don’t, really, but hey, fantastic claims are the order of the day, apparently!Report
But they are evidence that election witnesses are saying they witnessed instances of fraud or illegal or invalid procedures.
Have you read them?
“This guy was weraring a BLM t-shirt.”
“I wanted to stand behind him and look over his should but they wouldn’t let me.”
“She was doing this thing that I don’t know exactly what it was but it didn’t look right to me.”
“I was too far away to read the ballots so I couldn’t tell if she was cheating or not.”Report
Look again. Large batches of pristine mail-in-ballots were seen during one of the recounts. One of the things about mail-in-ballots is that they get folded to fit in the envelope. But heck, maybe they’ve got people whose job is to iron out the creases.
They’ve also seen large numbers of “pre-printed” ballots with Biden’s name already filled in. Once the ballots were separated from the envelope, the number of ballots is limited only by the amount of blank paper on hand, since the workers can just hit “print” and fire them off on a laser printer.
And plenty of the affidavits are from people who went to vote and were told they already voted, or voted and then, when they checked, found that their vote wasn’t recorded. This seems to affect hundreds of thousands of people. That happened to some of the bloggers I read. And there’s the women who found out someone voted under their old maiden name, which happened to several women I comment with.
And that’s just the low-level fraud where ballots are physically handled. The other problem is hundreds of thousands of votes with no associated ballots. We know those exist because vote totals were going up three our four times faster than the available hardware could count ballots. We know it happened because some areas had 300% turnout. We’re seeing bizarre and impossible statistics that we don’t see in previous elections, nor in most non-key states whose election systems weren’t easily hacked, and by hacking, I mean things any junior high kid could do.
The Dominion machines don’t have any form of security. Their Internet data traffic isn’t even encrypted. They have one password for everybody. You can hop on them, from the Internet, and delete files. You can pull up the vote total file and edit it in Notepad, and it doesn’t leave a trace. You can make up any number of votes you want, copy them to a USB stick, and copy the votes onto any other voting machine.
And from the look of it, it wasn’t that someone was hacking the election, it was that multiple groups were doing it. By the activity, it looks like some of that was uncoordinated, so having different players adjusting the totals in different ways just multiplied the number of obvious red flags.
And the data analysts are seeing this all over the place. One described the interesting ways the cabal tried to hide the fraud by spreading it around to different precincts at different times, shuffling votes from place to place. All of those moves were leaving records in the real-time vote totals, which anyone could scrape with freeware on Github or other places. When we’re talking about votes “moving”, it’s because we recorded them disappearing from Trump and appearing in Biden’s total. In Pennsylvania, the number of negative votes in those files is close to a million. How do you cast a -1 vote?
As I said, the fraud was easy to perpetrate, but it was also trivially easy to detect. And it looks massive. It’s quite likely that the 2018 Kentucky election was stolen, and it’s also quite possible that the Democrat control of the house in 2018 was likewise due to electronic election fraud. Getting Biden in doesn’t stop the ugliness, it multiplies it, and the right is already talking about Biblical responses and repercussions that will still be talked about a thousand years from now. All those primitive, superstitious people who clings to guns and religion? They mean it.Report
588 word comment and you still couldn’t manage to string one phrase together that was true anywhere among it. Impressive.Report
I take it you’re in a hermetically sealed information vacuum, like most Democrats who think that CNN, MSNBC, or ABC, etc., are providing a shred more information than they did on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Have you read though some of the Dominion user manuals? I have.
Have you read many of the affidavits? I have.
Have you analyzed odd patterns of voting numbers for hundreds of counties? I have.
Have you calculated standard deviations in turnout numbers, and correlation coefficients to to county demographics? I have.
Have you conducted multiple lines of your own analysis, and compared them to what stats and data forensics people are finding? I have.
Have you considered that perhaps you know less than virtually any Republican, who are now awash in information, is that your sources are determined to make sure you’re completely ignorant of what’s going on? I’m definitely thinking that may be the case. You might want to look into that.
This is perhaps the biggest US story since WW-II, and so many people who like to think they’re smart are just sleeping right through it, saying “Nothing to see here! Move along!”Report
“I take it you’re in a hermetically sealed information vacuum, like most Democrats who think that CNN, MSNBC, or ABC, etc., are providing a shred more information than they did on Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
“Have you considered that perhaps you know less than virtually any Republican, who are now awash in information, is that your sources are determined to make sure you’re completely ignorant of what’s going on? I’m definitely thinking that may be the case. You might want to look into that.”
I apologize, George, this is my fault: I broke my own rule about ignoring your comments. I bow to you being the SME on living in a hermetically sealed information vacuum, and will resume ignoring your comments so that you may continue to enjoy the vast latitude you do in our commenting section. Do enjoy yourself.Report
I’ll just say this again (keeping in mind CJColucci’s comment downthread about hearsay):
Of ALL this supposed evidence, what has gone in front of a judge, and remember that many of these judges were installed by Republicans, and survived pre-trial motions?
If all this evidence is rock solid proof of a crime, why is it NOT being brought in front of these allied judges?
Basically you are alleging a vaster conspiracy than any seen before, and yet somehow ALL of the players in this conspiracy are keeping perfectly silent about it.
Here’s the vast conspiracy: more than half the country hates Trump more than they despise Biden.Report
I have been quite amused by the armchair lawyers explaining that, of course, the ‘real evidence’ is not being shown in course because then the defense would know about it!
They tell me they’re saving it for “the trial” or” the appeal” or even “for SCOTUS”.
In short, what little they know about law is from TV and — judging by their reactions to people explaining reality to them — they don’t intend to let pesky reality change their beliefs.
I do look forward to the briefly shocked looks on their faces when, somehow, Biden isn’t placed on the stand before SCOTUS to suddenly confess the plot after Rudy asks a few penetrating questions andunveils his surprise evidence!Report
IANAL and even I get that surprise evidence has to really be a surprise to everyone, as in someone just discovered it last night after the court closed for the day, and there is not time to give proper notice, and even then the judge might disallow it, or call a recess so the other side has time to review things and pivot.Report
I’m confused. Is Biden the genius who could put that plan together, or is he a pathetic victim of dementia?
Or is it BOTH?Report
A demented genius?Report
“Not necessarily, I think.” Will try this out next time I am in court, George, thanks.Report
Some of the statements were even double hearsay!Report
They should result in double secret probation.Report
I did enjoy the judge walking the plaintiff’s attorney through hearsay.
“I heard someone say…how is that not hearsay?”
Politely helping Rudy remember “scrutiny” is a thing might have topped it.
But I think the best out of all this mess was a footnote in the PA ruling, which noted that plaintiff’s only wanted to toss the Presidential vote. It noted the Court could not claim a law was both Constitutional and unconstitutional at the same time, eviscerating a core idiocy in every one of the Trump lawsuits: That there was massive, massive fraud that disqualifies JUST the Presidential vote.
Not any other part of the ballot. That’s fine.Report
“Most of it is admissible in court, because it’s evidence. Sworn statements by witnesses are not hearsay.”
Sworn statements obtained outside of a court proceeding are, literally by the definition, hearsay.Report
To be picky about it, if X is submitting an affidavit in a pre-trial proceeding, X is, in effect, swearing that if called to testify, he will testify to A,B, and C. If X doesn’t testify at trial, then the affidavit cannot be received into evidence as proof of A,B, and C, because it is hearsay. But for pre-trial purposes, including determining whether there will be a trial in the first place, they are admissible as, in effect, promises of admissible testimony to come.
But what X testifies to in the affidavit — A,B, and C — must be something that X could testify to in court. If X says in an affidavit: “I saw Smith take 5,000 Trump ballots and throw them into an incinerator,” that is his direct knowledge. He could testify to it at trial, and an affidavit saying that would be admissible pre-trial as evidence that someone trashed 5,000 Trump ballots. But if X’s affidavit says: “Jones told me he saw Smith take 5,000 Trump ballots and throw them in the incinerator,” Smith’s trial testimony would be a recounting of what Jones told him rather than a recounting of what X himself knows. It would be inadmissible hearsay at trial and, therefore, worthless in an affidavit offered as proof that Jones burned 5,000 Trump ballots.
There are lots of ways around the hearsay rule. If, for example, what Jones said had some independent evidentiary value apart from whether Smith burned Trump ballots (for example, that Jones speaks English), X’s testimony at trial, and affidavit pre-trial, would be admissible to prove that Jones said what he said. But not as proof that what Jones said was true.Report
Indeed. People here seem to misunderstand the hearsay rule. It only applies to hearsay purposes. Sworn affidavits are perfectly fine in support of motions. And of course the proper objection isn’t “hearsay”, it’s “hearsay outside the exceptions of the hearsay rule”, since some hearsay evidence is admissible.Report
Nobody is misunderstanding, George. Your original comment said “sworn statements are not hearsay.” You are incorrect. They are. If what you meant was that sworn statements are, in this case, admissible, that is a different thing altogether.Report
That isn’t how it’s done, George. The objection is “hearsay,” period, and most judges don’t want to hear any more. Then it is the proponent’s obligation to come up with an exception. If the proponent doesn’t come up with an exception, the proponent is sunk. Unless the judge feels like helping out, which is rare.
And if the pre-trial affidavit offered on a motion merely retails inadmissible hearsay, it is itself inadmissible.Report
Um, no. Not at all. The affidavits are sworn statements, by the parties involved, saying they will testify in court to events they witnessed. They are not affidavits saying “Bob said that Joe said…”
These are not being used in court as evidence, which would be hearsay use, they’re being presented to support a motion, which is a way of saying “Here is the witness testimony that I will present before the court.”
By your reading, trials could never actually happen because nobody could ever present any “evidence” to get a judge to hold a hearing, because all “evidence” presented to justify holding a hearing is “hearsay”.
As for hearsay, maybe your state is different, or maybe my attorney is OCD (he was trained in hearsay by the author of a book on hearsay evidence). He always objects by saying “hearsay outside the exceptions”, and there are dozens of exceptions, such as dying statements, that are perfectly admissible. There are statements made at the time of the events, which are gold. That’s why police interview everyone at the scene, in case they try to change their story later.
There are written documents, official documents, professional documents, personal records, religious records, diary entries about vaguely remembered events, and all kinds of other written materials that are admissible.
Apparently getting Biden in requires everyone to pretend to be blind, incompetent, or both. It’s not a good look.
In any event, the Third Circuit has granted an expedited appeal in Pennsylvania, with everything due tomorrow by 4:00 PM.Report
“Apparently getting Biden in requires everyone to pretend to be blind, incompetent, or both. It’s not a good look.”
Again, your whole claim rests upon the entire public edifice of the election in those key states being willing to commit felonies galore, and judges being willing rule always against the Trump team, even in the face of compelling evidence. And the absurdity of that is just lost on you.
And you still ignore the most basic of facts that effectively NONE of the evidence you claim exists is being put in front of judges to rule upon. What good are affidavits if Trumps own lawyers aren’t willing to put them forth as evidence?
You’ve become lost in your own conspiracy fantasy. I’m done.Report
And yet you’re not arguing that massive fraud wasn’t committed, you’re arguing that nobody is able to stop Biden from getting away with it, or that mass fraud would require large numbers of Democrats to commit fraud, which is begging the question, because that is exactly what is being alleged. Large number of Democrats, at all levels, engaged in rampant fraud.
We have mountains of eye-witness testimony that that is, in fact, the case.
Further, we have Democrat’s obstinate objections to any thorough recount or audit process. If they didn’t fear that widespread fraud would be shown, they shouldn’t have any serious objections to audits and recounts, especially given that they spent the last four years telling everyone how easy it was to rig an election.
The head of the FEC has said that even now, the evidence meets the scrutiny required by the federal standards of civil procedure for dismissal, and in the summary judgement phase, all the witnesses are assumed to be credible.
One party has committed one of the largest crimes in US history, and is desperately trying to get away with it, and the other party is trying to stop them from completing the execution of this crime.
One of the purposes of a functioning legal system is to prevent aggrieved parties (80 million angry Republicans in this case), from taking matters into their own hands. Now surely none of us want that to happen, because what they might do might know no bounds.Report
First of all, don’t confuse sarcasm or facetiousness for admission of anything. I do not believe that there is any large scale fraud because:
1) That would require a massive conspiracy, which is an extraordinary claim, and thus it demands extraordinary evidence, not just weak affidavits.
2) If the evidence you claims exists, the legal team is doing a shite job getting it in front of sympathetic judges.
3) The states are not objecting to recounts, they are objecting to paying for recounts just because Trump doesn’t like the results. Recounts cost money. If Trump wasn’t diverting half of the donations he is getting to paying of his debt to himself, he might be able to pay for the recounts. Also, recounts have to be done before deadlines. You can’t just demand recounts forever.
4) The head of the FEC is a Trump appointee and has deck all to do with elections. He is in charge of campaign finance enforcement. His opinion on election fraud is about as useful as my opinion on haute couture fashion.
You continue to prove nothing untoward has happened. Even if I was to grant that something smelled off, there is still a need for actual actionable evidence, which isn’t being put forth.Report
A reminder: Georgia actually already had its full, hand recount of the presidential race, and it didn’t change the totals literally at all.
See, there’s a joke: State law actually requires one race be recounted by hand, during the audit to check the totals.
Now, earlier in this audit, a single misplaced memory card was found in a Republican county, but…but that was a thing that a thing that happened before and independent of the recount part, it was noticed because the vote totals from a county didn’t add up.
And that’s the reason the audit exists, it worked as intended. There were X number of voters listed as having voted in one precinct, and much less actual votes (You can have a few missing votes because it is hypothetically possible for voters to sign in and not vote, but it shouldn’t be any real number.), and they had that precinct resubmit their vote totals, and it came out correctly.
But, anyway, Georgia then takes those machine totals, and recounts one race by hand. Our Secretary of State, cleverly, picked the Presidental race. So that race was recounted on every ballot.
Let’s go back and check what George said:
Well, we had the full hand recount of that race, and…no changes. Unless this massive voter fraud was ‘sneaking into one Republican county and temporarily hiding a memory card in such a way it later would be noticed via the totals that it hadn’t been added in, and leaving it so it could be added back in’.
Oh, and just in case anyone is wondering: The ‘recount’ that the Trump campaign has asked for is actually sorta a screw-up in the law. The law shouldn’t actually allow a ‘demand’ recount for the race we _already_ hand recounted. But it does.
But, because we already know the machine count matches the hand count, this ‘recount’ will consist of..running the ballots through the scanner again. For literally no reason. But we’re going to do it.Report
And this, BTW, is where I go ‘whoa whoa whoa, stop giving _any_ benefit of the doubt to Trumpist claims’.
Who, _exactly_, are the Democrats objecting to a recount? This is some massive effort, right, all of them objecting to it. So it should trivially easy find these people objecting, right?
I see a lot of people _claiming_ Democrats fighting these, but…literally no actual examples.Report
And yet you’re not arguing that massive fraud wasn’t committed,
I am. There’s no evidence of massive fraud. None. Nada. Bupkis. The MSM isn’t hiding it. Rudy and his henchpeople aren’t neglecting to bring it up in court. Federalist Society judges aren’t looking the other way.
Trump is a liar. Rudy is a liar. Ellis is a liar. Powell is either a liar or certifiably insane; it’s hard to tell The media that supports this garbage are liars too. The legal claims are so much smaller than the media hype because lying to a judge leads to contempt and sanctions.
The GOP did pretty well this election. Trump didn’t, because people dislike him, and for good reason. He’s a lazy, selfish, stupid, pig-ignorant, vile buffoon, unable to lead, follow, or at least get out of the way. This whole legal fracas exists because he’s too big a baby to admit he lost.Report
As for the expedited appeal, details matter
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/president-trump-wanted-a-supreme-court-election-battle-his-current-appeal-simply-cannot-get-him-there/Report
George, is this reading comprehension problem of long standing?Report
Oh, and LOL on his analysis. He called 20,000 people, got a few hundred response and now wants to extrapolate that out? This is why you don’t get random mathematicians to analyze elections.Report
He’s not a random mathematician, he’s a professor of statistics at American #1 liberal arts university, who has written multiple books on statistics. Tons of experts are weighing in saying there’s clear evidence of fraud. In response, the only sound from experts on the left has been crickets. They’re not going to destroy their professional reputations trying to argue against multitudinous mountains of evidence, because the fraud wasn’t subtle, it was over-the-top and extremely sloppy, like you’d see in a banana republic.
And indeed, the larger argument that there’s no evidence of election fraud is a losing argument. In fact, it’s not even a theoretical winnable argument, since it requires proving a negative. I’m surprised anyone is still trying to cling to it, instead of moving on to the next positions on the list of arguments everyone is going to make, that the fraud wasn’t widespread, or that the widespread fraud didn’t change the outcome, or that Biden didn’t personally know about the widespread fraud that changed the outcome.
And that’s what this will come down to. What did Biden know and when did he know it?Report
“He’s not a random mathematician, he’s a professor of statistics at American #1 liberal arts university, who has written multiple books on statistics. ”
And his name is?
Why am I skeptical? Do you know how many professors of engineering made public statements that jet fuel could not get hot enough to melt steel and bring down the WTC? The PhD is not proof against idiocy and partisan bias.Report
Also lots of legit very smart people who know nothing of medicine let alone pandemics made claims about Covid. Most of those claims were that it would be done by june, 50 k dead at most, etc. Specific expertise matters.Report
Which is why Trump put a
pandemic expertinfectious disease specialistradiologist in charge.ReportHis name was linked at the top of the thread, attached to his affidavit.
He’s Steven J Miller, author of the book Benford’s Law: Theory and Applications.
He also wrote “An Invitation to Modern Number Theory”, published by the Princeton University Press, and “The Probability Lifesaver”.
And he’s just one of many legions of professionals who are weighing in.
You see, the problem you have is that millions of people witnessed something huge, and you’re trying to argue that nothing happened and nobody saw anything.
When everybody went to bed, Trump was ahead in a landslide victory, even in the key states. Then all those states said they were stopping the vote counting, which is something that never happens, and while they weren’t counting votes, millions of new Biden votes somehow got counted.
That defies logic. Why would Democrat votes take longer to count than Republican votes? Why didn’t that happen in non-key states? Is there some reason Democrats were required to wait to the last second to cast ballots, but only in the key states? How come no Republicans waited to the last second?
How come the states that couldn’t count ballots with any speed could somehow count hundreds of thousands of Biden ballots, apparently in mere seconds, when it suited them? And the more you look into it, the bigger and more ham-handed the whole thing was.
None of it is going to look right because none of it is right. There’s no way to somehow produce a tranche of 100,000 ballots that run 99% for Biden from a population who’s previous and subsequent mixing ratios were 60-40 or 70-30. Statistically, we can say with certainty that the outlier was not selected from the same population.
Facts are stubborn things, and they’re not going to change. All you might accomplish is bringing about the Democrat’s worst nightmares, a Democrat President who everyone knows is only there through criminal fraud, carried out in collusion with hostile foreign powers. An usurper who was not elected by the people, but installed by billionaires, with the aid and support of pretty much every politician with a (D) after their name.
If Biden gets in, the repercussions for Democrats will be Biblical. 2020 will be seen as the happy times, like the glorious and beautiful spring of 1914.Report
Sigh…Report
See, there’s actually a really good reason George doesn’t give out those sort of details…it means people can look it up.Report
Senator Pat Toomey told Trump to concede after the PA Judge shut down the latest attempt to legal coup a victory. Notably, Pat Toomey has said he is not running for reelection or for governor in 2022. At the same time, Trump has appealed to the 3rd Circuit.
There was an easy I read on Friday about a similarly silly Sri Lankan coup: https://medium.com/indica/i-lived-through-a-coup-america-is-having-one-now-437934b1dac3
I don’t think this guy is completely right and he tends towards hyperbole and dourness. If Trump actually asked the military to invalidate the election, I am almost certain he would get a hard no. At the same time, I don’t think this is a complete grift from the gang who could not shoot straight. They aren’t doing this just to gin up things for Trump TV on January 21, 2021. We have reached a point in civic discourse where a good chunk of the country seems the other part and illegitimate and unfit to rule. This can go up and down the party. The grifter is not too easy to separate from the mark. Even Republicans who realize Biden won fair and square and scared and do not want Trump’s wrath unless they have nothing to lose because they retired and/or are going to soon.
There are enough mechanisms of American law left to prevent Trump from being successful. MI and PA will certify on Monday and put further nails in his coffin. But we are not in a good place if this is happening and I do not see things getting better even if Biden takes over as planned on January 20 and Warnock and Ossoff win re-electtion.Report
Even 30% of Democrats think Biden stole it. The narrative didn’t work as intended, and it’s going to fail harder and harder as the statistics professors, computer security professionals, and witnesses weigh in.
It will be established that Biden is only ahead through widespread and multiple forms of election fraud. As I pointed out, there’s no way only three bellwethers called the election correctly, considering they each have a 90.58% reliability (88% is the 1960 election is included, which registers very high on the bellwether fraud-o-meter, as does the 1968 election where the winner had to resign the Presidency over, um, trying to rig an election).
To put some numbers on this, I modeled it was rolling seventeen ten-dice where one is wrong and all other numbers, 2 through 10, and a correct call. That gives each die a 10% chance of getting the election wrong, just as the bellwethers do.
So you’ve got a high-stakes roll-playing game that involves rolling 17-ten dice, and counting the ones. The average roll is 1.7 ones, but zero, one, two, and three are common. Four is pretty rare, and you’ve seen those come up before. You’ve never seen anyone roll five ones, and you heard about a guy who rolled six in a tournament, and then got banned for cheating, and a guy who rolled eight ones, but everyone knew the mafia had rigged that game.
So, you’re way ahead against the final player, Chad Thompson, and you head to the refrigerator for an organic soda. You hear wild cheering, come back, and Chad and his buddies are all celebrating. One pipes “Chad rolled a fourteen!” Chad is grinning like a maniac, and all his buddies are snickering. The odds against rolling 14 ones are 197,281,461,461 to 1. That’s 197.281 billion to 1 odds against it being an honest roll, or that it’s 197 billion times more likely that Chad and his buddies cheated while you were in the kitchen, than that they didn’t.
If you accept Chad’s roll, you are a chump. If you accept Chad’s roll when your webcam footage shows him and his buddies turning the dice to one, individually, while laughing under their breath, you are a real chump.
And that’s what happening with all the multiple, independent confirmations of widespread election fraud, and both statistical and common-sense approaches to determining its magnitude. What we’re seeing now, on the part of Democrats, are desperate attempts to get away with it. They are modifying recounts, counting freshly printed ballots, counting pre-printed ballots (what were printed with Biden already filled in), and apparently shredding Republican ballots that they hadn’t counted. As they say, the cover-up is often worse than the crime.
The Democrats have shown they can no longer be trusted to be involved in anything election related, which is a very disturbing development.Report
While its gratifying to see judges making the correct ruling and the occasional Republican state official following the law and doing their duty, the distressing part is to see how the Constitution and our system of laws assumes good faith participation by everyone, and to see how little of that is left in the Republican Party.
There really is no magic shield preventing America from falling into a corrupt autocracy.Report
Almost all these lawsuits are getting dismissed on the motion to dismiss stage. Surviving a motion to dismiss is often a relatively to very low bar. The problem is that very few people want to admit when radical steps are necessary to deal with a radical problem. We are still at the “We Need to Talk About Kevin” stage here but the confrontations are too hard, might require people to make uncomfortable decisions, and people still hope for Res Ipsa Loquitor to work like when Pelosi was reluctant to bring impeachment hearings and said Trump will “self-impeach.”Report
Dude, there has yet to be a single allegation of Republican election fraud. In contrast, we’re piling up thousands of sworn affidavits alleging Democrat election fraud. Someone was definitely not participating in good faith, and it’s not the Republicans.
If you want a corrupt autocracy, how about taking a look at the billionaires who were rigging it? How about looking at Dominion (whose website no looks like it was written by a schizophrenic facing life in prison).
Recall that everybody went to bed on November 3rd with Trump leading 51.7 to 46.8 in Wisconsin, 57.0 to 41.8 in Pennsylvania, 54 to 44.4 in Michigan, and 53.1 to 45.6 in Georgia. Then those states, for some inexplicable reason, all stopped counting. While they weren’t counting, somehow Biden got hundreds of thousands of extra votes, in cases at rates that exceeded by wide margins the physical capacity of the vote-counting machines to count ballots. In some cases, 100% of the ballots were for Biden, which is a statistical impossibility given the ratio of ballots that preceded and followed those batches.
The still unexplained votes from nowhere failed, in many cases, Benford’s law of first digits, physical possibility, and a host of statistical tests. The more we dig into them, the more it looks like they were a combination of software vote-stealing algorithms and numbers that people just made up on the fly. And making them up is trivially easy. The software allows any operator, with a few keystrokes, to enter any number of votes as “write-ins”.
And now we’re finding out that many states hooked all their voting machines directly to the Internet, reasoning that instead of having Dominion employees on hand, they could just work from home to reduce the risk of Covid.
So now all the forensics people are piling in, because everybody loves a good who-done-it. We’re way beyond talking about if fraud was committed, to dissecting how it was committed, moment-by-moment, technique-by-technique. Moving the stolen votes from Trump to Jorgensen, and then moments later from Jorgensen to Biden, still stumps me, but I’m sure the programmer had a reason in mind. The amount of apparent election rigging in Montgomery Count Pennsylvania is insane. There, 90,022 mail-in-votes showed up three days after the election, 95% of them for Biden. But mysteriously, they only added 9,534 votes to his total, implying that about 80,000 in-person votes somehow disappeared.
And the floating-point vote totals, which were widespread in the New York Times database, are obviously a sign that the machines weren’t actually counting votes, they were generating them according to algorithms. When you see someone getting 63.39 votes, you know things aren’t on the up-and-up.Report
Who are all these forensics people piling in? Are these like your election fraud lawyer from Canada who was actual a former family law attorney?
And are all these unexplained things actually unexplained, or are you just not accepting the explanation, because that is 99.999% of what I see here.Report
How about the statistic professor from the top liberal arts school in the US, with math and physics degrees from Princeton? Does he count? How about all the professionals who run companies that investigate the relevant elements, such as data security, fraud, and other related crimes?
How do you explain fractional votes in floating point? How do you explain 53 consecutive tranches of ballots that had the same Trump Biden ratio, accurate to four decimal places? That’s a software “feature” on the Dominion machines.
And again, you’re trying to get me to except that Chad rolled 14 ones, against 197 billion to one odds, with reams of evidence pointing to election rigging. The way this goes is that you will soon believe the election was rigged, as will everyone else who’s currently saying it wasn’t. That’s what happens when there’s mounds of evidence that a major crime was committed.
You’re in the position that many Republicans were in when they heard that some plumbers with ties to the White House had broken into a a hotel in Washington. Back then plenty of Republicans didn’t think it was in any way connected to anyone important, much less Nixon. Those beliefs didn’t last long.
So the real question is what you’ll think if Biden is in office, and 90% of the public thinks he’s a criminal who rigged an election to get there, and had enough water-carriers willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get him across the finish line? Harris was obviously in on it, along with Pelosi, so you won’t even have a line of valid succession until you hit Chuck Grassley, which you’re not going to accept anyway.Report
Professor who? A name, a link?
Who are these professionals? I see a lot of people claiming to be professionals, who really aren’t.
If ANY of this was not getting sliced up by Occam, why is it not being presented to the courts. The courts aren’t shooting any of this down because no one is offering it up as evidence. The only evidence being offered to the courts is hearsay. I hear about sworn affidavits, but who has actually taken the stand?
And yes, that is why Cosby got away with it for so damn long.
But at the end of the day, you can’t just look at some funny numbers and say a crime happened, you have to explain how they got around the election controls. You have to find people who appear to have voted who could not possibly have voted or are willing to testify that they did not vote.
And maybe those examples exist, but then you HAVE TO BRING THEM TO A JUDGE.
And that last step is not happening.Report
I got to watch people absolutely misunderstand Benford’s Law recently.
That was hilarious. It was clearly a case of someone grabbing at a sparkly object and using it as a hammer. Of course, even a few minutes of looking at Benford’s — what it says, what it applies to, and it’s limitations — would quickly show you why it’s not used to analyze most election results (or if it is, they use a second-digit variant).
But you had some monkeys waving around their sparkling tool, bashing a precision microscope against rocks and talking about how it’s the i platonic ideal of hammers even as they routinely bash everything but the nail.Report
There are two definitive and proven examples of voter fraud committed by Republicans alone in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election. One guy in Forty-fort attempted to get a ballot so his dead mother could vote for Trump, another guy in Chester county literally attempted to disguise himself as his son (who is a registered dem) to vote for Trump.Report
“disguise himself as his son ”
Now I have this image of Steve Buscemi with a backwards baseball cap and carrying a skateboard.Report
My dude, you are embarrassing yourself.Report
The sad part is that he doesn’t think he is no matter how many people tell him so. He has decided that all Democratic victories are not legitimate and that there is a huge Trumpist majority in the United States. Even when he concedes that HRC won more votes in 2016, he deligitimatizes the votes because they were all in “not real” states like California, New York, and Washington.
Though the fact that he can write meth rant paragraph after meth rant paragraph on the matter is impressive.Report
What officials (legislative, executive, or judicial, D or R) have failed to do their jobs?Report
That woman in the GSA who is refusing to do her duty, and the elections officials who refused to certify the results, just off the top of my head.
Not to mention those who are complicit in their silence, such as nearly the entire Republican party. By refusing to acknowledge the election results, they are tacitly siding with those who want to undermine its legitimacy.
We here think George is being silly and not worth taking seriously, but remember that he represents the thinking of a large number of the Republican Party, and the elected officials are happy to entertain the delusion for their own craven ends.Report
You said you only saw the *occasional* Republican state official following the law and doing their duty. It looks like your complaint is only that they’re not doing their duty according to your schedule.Report
DE, FL, GA, ID, KY, LA, MS, ND, OK, SC, SD, VE, VA, & WY have all certified. Looks like 8 or so states certify today and tomorrow. Everyone else has until 12/11/220 (CA) to certify according to their own state laws.Report
Michigan certed today, effectively (the last vote was just passed 3-0 with one coward abstaining). And PA will cert tomorrow night after 7:00.
Which means, for the GSA, that 270 EC votes of Biden states have certified their results.Report
They are also hoping to keep the fires stocked ahead of the Georgia Senate run-offs. If they call him to task, they believe (and I think correctly) that one or both senate seats will flip to D’s, which flips control of the Senate.
Humorously, it seems Trump’s supporters are reinforcing this message with recent protests alleging they will stay home if Trump isn’t certified as the winner.Report
George’s fanfiction is fascinating. What an interesting hobby! Bless his heart.Report
In other news, Biden picks people who know what they are doing and what they are talking about: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/us/politics/biden-antony-blinken-secretary-of-state.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=HomepageReport
I actually think this is not a great sign. Blinken is another incompetent neocon/liberal interventionist. Counter point is here:
https://nonzero.org/post/biden-forpol-team-1-blinken
Hopefully Biden remembers he wasn’t elected to get Americans killed over which brand of scum runs Syria.Report
Where do you find experts to run the State Department if they aren’t part of the Establishment? The alternative to people like Blinken is somebody like Gorka, a weirdo academic with weirdo ideas that nobody likes working with or a business person that looks good on paper but doesn’t tend to work out in reality that well.Report
Is every establishment player of the mind that we really need to care which scum is running Syria?Report
I think people are doing a lot of projecting on Blinkin. There is a difference between needing to stay to clean up the previous mess than doing what Bush II did and running in. Trump admin officials admitted that they are only taking troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan to cause as many fires as possible for the Biden admin. I.e., they are nihilists who want to be the Heath Ledger version of the Joker. They want the world to burn for no more reason than inchoate anger.
I am not an isolationist. I do think there are times when American military intervention is morally and ethically correct and necessary. Iraq was not one of those times but we do have obligation not to leave the country as a dumpster fire.
There is a certain take I am seeing where people think the one good thing about Trump is that he stuck a fork in the eye of the establishment. But it should really be read as the “establishment.” No one is exactly sure who the establishment is or what they stand for except to be empty vessels for inchoate anger.
Biden’s picks are competent, they have knowledge and experience, and were dedicated civil servants. Biden was never going to be a radical. I think he is more progressive than people expect because he is an old guy but he is not going to pick some rock the boat type. He needs to reestablish trust abroad and build back moral among the necessary civil branch that has been completely demoralized by Trump’s antics. I think Blinkin is just the type of person to do this. Do you have any alternatives?
*For example, he is against the death penalty and might be the first President-elect/President in my lifetime to say so openly.Report
Saul, I think that’s fair but it’s also fair to hold the Biden admin accountable on this particular issue where things went extremely poorly under both Bush and Obama. Reestablishing norms need not mean refusing to learn.Report
Cosign.
Completely.Report
Also cosign. I would think, after all the lessons of this century so far, that Democrats would stay far the hell away from optional military interventions of any sort.Report
Maybe they don’t exist in which case it is impossible to overstated the bad things that says about the establishment. Blinken suggests to me that they didn’t even look.Report
I’ve learned that here is a team of Venezuelans who have entered the US and are up to who knows what sort of mischief. They are code-named Miggy, Panda, and The Big Cat.Report
Something jumped out at me today. I agree this is a grift. But it’s not just a grift on the public; it’s a grift on Trump. Rudy and Ellis are taking advantage of the situation, telling him what he wants to hear, preening for the cameras but, when it comes time to go to Court, being much more reserved in their claims.
This really jumped out at me when they filed their appeal today. They waited a day, instead of filing immediately. And the grounds are extremely narrow and trivial. Even if they win, it means nothing. They are trying to drag this out for as much as they can get in attorney’s fees, knowing they don’t have a case.
This also explains why they got rid of Powell. Her crazy was getting in the way of the grift.Report
I think it is comforting to think this way but I am not sure it is true. The reason I think we want it to be a grift because the conclusion of the efforts being sincere means we need to address some very uncomfortable thoughts. Here is an essay by Anne Applebaum on Emily Murphy:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/why-wont-emily-murphy-just-do-her-job/617184/
“Well, no. She is not doing her honest duty. She is behaving badly, dishonestly, unfairly. She is violating the Constitution of the United States of America by refusing to recognize that the election is over, that Trump’s lawsuits and legal games are frivolous, and that the transition has begun. But she, like so many others in the White House, seems to believe the exact opposite: that it is part of her job to support radical, norm-breaking, democracy-destroying lies. Like so many others in the Republican Party, she appears to think that election results do not need to be accepted; that legal votes can be challenged; that courts and political pressure can be used to change the result.
In the grand historical scheme of things, this particular form of delusion is not uncommon. A lot of historical and political-science work has been devoted in recent years to bureaucrats who become ideologues—though I cringe to mention it, because most of it applies to people in much more severe and dramatic situations. In the years since Hannah Arendt coined the expression banality of evil, a number of historians have begun to argue, for example, that most of the Nazi bureaucrats who later described themselves as “just following orders” were doing no such thing: They were active and enthusiastic partisans, imagining themselves to be brave members of the Nazi avant-garde. They thought they were good people.”
There is a large tendency of it can’t happen here in American thought and psychology. Coups and civil unrest and extreme negative partisanship are things that happen in other countries. Parliamentary fistfights are things that happen in other countries. Except they happened here (Charles Sumner getting beaten by Preston Brooks) and can happen again. As much as we like to think of George Turner is a clown, I think Chip is right. He represents the thinking of a lot of Americans. Maybe not as extreme or paragraphy but I think a lot of people share the Trump delusion including his lawyers. The reason firms like Jones Day left is because they had professional integrity not to state bullshit.
It just seems like a lot of people would rather not think of Trump as a new normal because that thought is too depressing to contemplate.Report
FWIW, they amended their appeal already. (Not a good sign).
Somehow, they made it even worse and more incoherent. As one guy analyzing it pointed out, he was on page 3 of the amended complaint and was not certain what they were even appealing anymore, which is not ideal.
Worse yet, they really don’t seem to realize it’ll be mooted today, having decided that the federal safe harbor date is the real time limit, and not PA’s own legally mandated cert date.Report
Also, having probably read that same guy’s Twitter, the campaign doesn’t seem to realize that, in only appealing the court’s denial to let them amend their complaint, they have totally screwed up.
Yes, seriously, that’s what they are appealing, a courts denial to let them amend something _a second time_. Which…is stupid enough in a normal case, but in one that is so time-sensitive…um…yeah, the court isn’t going to let you _keep_ changing the case.
But, anyway, they have actually completely screwed up because you can only appeal a decision once, aka ‘one bite of the apple’, so regardless of how that appeal goes, _everything else the court decided_ is true.
And the court…had actually just laughed them out of itself.
So, when this appeal, to ‘be able to amend a previous complaint’, loses (Because it’s _stupid_ and one has a right to keep filing dumbass amendments to their complaints), they then don’t have any more appeals and then the judgement (Which was, again, utterly destroying their case), stands.
But even _if it wins_, and they are…allowed to file a new amendment…the court has already decided a bunch of this case! And thus only their new stuff would get then be decided.
The lawyers on Twitter are just tearing these things to shreds. Trump really does only seem to be able to hire complete incompetents.Report
You have to remember that these appeals are designed to both satiate his ego – “yes master we are running to the courts for relief” – and to keep the base stoked up. Nothing more. Hence the act is the thing, not the players or the outcomes or even the contents. Just the act.Report
It’s kind of unfortunate this kind of article even needs to be written.
I just read earlier today that Gerald Ford had thinner margins (but mostly insurmountable) in states that might have turned the electoral tide had he challenged and won. Instead, he noted he’d lost the popular vote and wanted no part of said electoral victory. Now we’ve got DJT and his crack legal team seeking to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots based on some crackpot legal theories. Ford was only 45 year ago!
As an editorial note, one “bares” one’s teeth instead of “bears”.Report
Carl Bernstein is pulling no punches today
https://twitter.com/carlbernstein/status/1330710307052814336?s=20Report
And I am happy he is. These Republicans politicians are cowards, and include a number of folks who blathered on about how they “hoped” Trump learned his lesson after being impeached and acquitted. They deserve public shame. Heaps of it.Report
There were a handful of things that I heard that struck me as seriously being red flags… the best example is probably the whole Georgia found a whole bunch of ballots that had no votes on them except a vote for Biden. Nothing downticket, no Congress or Senate or local votes. Just ballots marked for Biden/Harris. And they were all found in one batch!
Holy cow, I thought. That’s a red flag.
What made it worse was seeing the arguments between the people saying “this is a red flag!” and people saying “no, well, you have to understand… it’s *NOT* a red flag because there are a lot of people out there who don’t have opinions on anything but Trump…”
Anyway, what changed my mind was finding out that the original claim wasn’t true. OH! You know what? That makes sense!
And so now, when I encounter a lot of red-flaggy claims, I try to look at the “is this confirmed to have happened or not?” versus whether or not I should see them as red flags.
And more of them are, at best, misdescribed (and, at worst, just didn’t happen) rather than being things that, seriously, I just have to understand.Report
We should all care very much about the integrity of this process and I have no problem looking into whatever allegations, no matter how unlikely. But at some point it is on the people claiming an asteroid hit the Earth to show us the crater.Report
This. We make the mistake of engaging with bullshit too quickly.Report
Yeah, exactly that. I made that exact point the other day…people are granting good faith to a lot of claims being said and trying to figure out if they are red flags.
But…uh…a lot of those things haven’t actually happened.
It’s like the article up there talking about ‘more votes than registered voters in Michigan’ thing, we all assumed, wait, that could be same-day registration.
Except, no, what it actually was was just…wrong. Like, literally wrong. There’s no place that more votes were cast than registered voters, even _not_ included same-day registrations. (Although it is somewhat funny there is a very small precinct where there was _literally_ that exact number.) The supposed ‘number of registered voters’ the votes were compared to was just completely made up. And moreover, as the articles…some of them weren’t in Detroit outskirts, but in _Trump parts of Minnesota_.
How long did we believe that? How long did we believe that the numbers out of Detroit looked a little dodgy but were probably explainable via last-minute registration? Instead of just thinking ‘The person telling me this is lying to my face.’?
We keep acting like we can assume _any_ level of truthfulness in this.
We cannot. At all. Stop believe _anything_ you hear about them say. Assume literally _every_ claim made is an outright, actual, factual lie…not a misinterpretation of data, not a misunderstanding, not a conspiracy formed around real unrelated facts….assume the actual facts being told to you are untrue.
Start from there. Don’t believe any assertion in any legal filing by them, don’t believe any numbers _they_ provide, do not believe anything where they are the source.
They are proven to be pathological liars at this point who literally just make things up, repeat it hundreds of time with no evidence, and this becomes ‘fact’. We need to operate like this is going on.Report
It’s like the article up there talking about ‘more votes than registered voters in Michigan’ thing, we all assumed, wait, that could be same-day registration.
The immediately going to “there could be reasons that this would be okay!” indicates motivated reasoning.
Now, sure. It’s motivated in the right direction, for the right reasons, on behalf of the right team. That’s all very commendable.
But “wait, let’s look at this” is what got us to “no, this is factually inaccurate” which is much more of an exoneration than “maybe it’s innocent and here’s an innocent explanation”.
Just admitting that, yes, this *DOES* look dodgy is the victory. Because you can go from there to “wait, this isn’t true” rather than long explanations about how same-day registrations for Biden exceeded those for Obama but that just makes sense because Biden is a lot more inspirational than Obama was.
There are plenty of ways to tell untruths. The ones that one tells to oneself are the worst ones.Report
Though sometimes there are reasons for things.
In many states, Trump was wining early and started to fall behind as the big-city and by-mail votes came in. That isn’t dodgy; that was expected.
In some states, turnout (voters/pre-registration) got to be a very big fraction (though never >= 1). Again, that isn’t dodgy; it makes perfect sense.
The two Georgia counties that failed to record their votes, as found during the recount? Both had Trump majorities, so unless they’re Republican counties sabotaging him, it’s normal human error. Good thing it was caught, and procedures have to be tightened up.
The thing to remember is that elections are run and overseen by a large group of people, local and statewide, the vast majority of whom are honest and dedicated. Anything as outlandish as the horror stories would have been noticed and investigated already.Report
There are almost always reasons for things.
There are also reasons to fool yourself.
But you should notice when you are.Report
No. Because what was described _hasn’t ever happened_. That’s not how you do voter fraud, even the large scale stuff that happened a long time ago.
Like, for example, the 1968 election, where Daley probably rigged the race…not for Kennedy, actually, but in the state’s attorney race. It was rigged in _every_ possible way. There were miscounted ballots, there were misread machines, there was odd math mistakes, there were people registered to vote who shouldn’t have been, probably made-up people or dead people, there was bribery.
You know what there wasn’t? And in fact, what no one has ever tried to rig a race by doing? Just…making up more votes than registered voters.
Because that’s obviously stupid. Every precinct has a list of registered voters. (Same-day registration adds to the list in real-time) This list is checked off, and totalled up at the end and that is the total number of votes cast.
You wouldn’t have to check the ballot numbers against ‘voter registration’, you’d literally have a precinct standing there holding a list saying 10,000 voters cast a vote in one hand, and holding 10,000+x cast ballots in the other, and it is _really obvious_ something is wrong.
Or to put it another way: This ‘fraud’ was, in fact, _immediately_ noticed by a dumbass who misunderstood things or lied about them. If this fraud had _actually_ happened, it also would have been immediately noticed.
Which is, again, why this has never happened.
A conspiratorial claim of something that hasn’t ever happened, and makes no sense because it would not work (And…’did not’ work), is pretty damn large, and immediately rebutted by any other possible alternative.
Or…people are a lot more determined to vote against Trump now than four years ago?
Which…they objectively were.
Granted, people were more determined to vote _for_ him, also, but that doesn’t change the fact…in fact, where did you get ‘same-day registrations for _Biden_’ from? You don’t register to vote for a specific candidate, and considering most in-person votes were for Trump, these hypothetical people doing same-day reg would have been mostly voting for him.
It seems somewhat weird for you to be skeptical that there would be more turnout in a race that _literally had more turnout_. Huh?Report
This technique is called the Big Lie. You Know Who used to use it a lot.Report
https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1329590099747725312?s=20
Dreher is losing it on twitter (again) over something related to LBGT rights especially gender pronouns and what not. These meltdowns are not going away and I think one of the reasons of Trump and Trumpism is that he represents a last ditch stance for their views to hold. This is a real existential panic on Dreher’s part.Report
Dreher!Report
Banana Slugs are cool little beasts. I read the amcon article. Lost on them is there is actual science and facts behind the scary “queer” word. They could actually learn something. If Rod Roddy weren’t so hysterical he could make a decent argument why using the word queer is not wise. If i were the NPS i wouldn’t use a lightening rod term since it provokes freak outs. But it is not wrong. Why use a word many will bristle at when you could find a more neutral term that won’t attract negative press attention. But of course for the Rodster every thing is a sing of totalitarianism coming down.Report
Is totalitarianism a baritone or a tenor?
I don’t think there is anything wrong with the word queer. And I think getting undertwisted about that term misses the point with Dreher. He would be freaking out no matter what because he is homophobic and does not think homosexuality should be supported, defended, or tolerated. This is the man who lost his cookies (intended) when the radical Bolsheviks at (checks notes) Nabisco issued Oreos with rainbow colored whatever concoction is inside them.Report
I dont’ think there is anything wrong with the word queer either. But it is a lightening rod term for some people so use it with care and knowledge of what it will bring. Some education about banana slugs doing their nasty sluggy thing wouldn’t even be dreher news w/o that one word. Of course rod is going to see totalitarianism coming regardless of what happens. The only question is what is going to be the topic of the day to freak him.Report
Working boy needs ta earn a living.Report
Anyone who loves A Confederacy of Dunces can’t be all bad.Report
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/23/us/joe-biden-trump?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
The Great Work begins.Report
I’m still waiting for John Durham to surprise us all with his indictments of Hillary, Obama and Biden.Report
AKA Durham’s bull.Report