BC POLITICS
Saved by @Alex1Powell

This analogy is unfair. In 04, exit polls suggested Kerry had won, and the Bush administration itself had helped fund exit polls in Ukraine that year & supported a Ukrainian election re-do based in part based on the exit polls. In 2020, exit polls favored Biden, not Trump. 1/

 2/ US State Dept commentary re the 2004 election in Ukraine and the discrepancy between the exit polls (which suggested a pro-West Yuschenko victory) and official results (which suggested a pro-Russia Yanukovych victory). https://t.co/dwWaTvL8aF
3/ The 2004 election in Ukraine was re-done and produced the opposite result, consistent with the exit polls.
4/ Exit polls in the US around the same time as Ukraine’s 2004 election suggested a solid Kerry victory. Voters had every reason to question why the Bush administration considered exit polls reliable in Ukraine but not in the US at the same time. https://t.co/SwUPeRnGtf
Discussion of Ohio 2004. 5/ https://t.co/PQ50iq5Dv0
Ohio’s Secretary of State that year, Ken Blackwell, was also a co-chair of Bush’s reelection campaign in Ohio. 6/ https://t.co/YGEhK65yxG
Ken Blackwell had also tried unsuccessfully to ban exit polls in Ohio in 2004. 7/ https://t.co/C7MXKm2H5K
Ken Blackwell is a fundamentalist Christian who opposes same sex marriage and abortion even in the case of rape or incest. 8/ https://t.co/xM8nil6vuQ
This discusses Blackwell’s position on abortion. 9/ https://t.co/pt1Tydenlq
Blackwell ran for Governor in 06. But on the morning of the election, EPluribus published proof that GOP operatives w/ ties to Blackwell had routed Ohio’s reported results in 04 to a server in TN owned by Smartech, which also hosted the Bush WH emails. 10/ https://t.co/RlyZtCaKCh
To be clear, this did not prove fraud. But it was shocking to some nonetheless. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but Blackwell then lost his race for Governor. 11/
Here’s a Wired article confirming what EPluribus proved in 2006, while noting that reported results are not the vote tallies themselves. 12 https://t.co/GWjBjEznYS
But a Republican-owned company named Triad also had remote access to at least some of the county tabulators in Ohio, which compiled precinct totals. (Triad provided voting equipment to about 1/2 of Ohio’s counties in 04.) 13/ https://t.co/vvzcGIS284
Triad is owned and run by the Rapp family, including Brett Rapp and Todd Rapp. I found this My Life profile for Todd Rapp, which says his interests include the Second Amendment and “pro-life.” 14/
Mike Connell, who built architecture that routed Ohio’s reported results to Smartech apparently thought abortion was murder. He died in a private plane crash b4 the trial in the case alleging the 04 election was rigged in favor of Bush, an evangelical. 15/ https://t.co/4lYuSXS3DN
None of this suffices to prove fraud. But if provides more than enough cause for concern, and a whole lot more than anything the current pro-Trump faction has come up with. 16/
This statement by @Spoonamore could not be corroborated, but also provided much legitimate cause for concern. 17/ https://t.co/YWua0MsAf8
When Connell was deposed, he acknowledged building the architecture that allowed Ohio’s results to be re-routed to Smartech in TN in the event the main server failed. He said he did not know why the Smartech server kicked in bc he saw no indication the main server had failed. 18/
Connell denied having knowledge of wrongdoing during his deposition, but was then subpoenaed for trial. He died before the trial. Spoonamore had been speaking with him in the interim period & thought his conscience was getting to him. A tragic event all around. 19/
Here’s a link to Connell’s deposition transcript via @TheBradBlog. 20/ https://t.co/arKBv6Tgom
I just noticed that an article about Connell and Ohio 2004 has been tagged by Twitter as potentially “spammy” and “unsafe”. This is the danger of equating Trump’s lies about 2020 w/ legitimate concerns about 2004. 21/
Here are just a few of Team Trump’s lies and misleads. 22/
More. 23/
And by the way, Ken Blackwell is trying to help Trump stay in office. He recently appeared on Steve Bannon’s war room podcast. 24/
Ken Blackwell also co-chairs the International Foundation for Electoral Systems w/ Tad DeVine who worked w/ Paul Manafort to help Pro-Russia Yanukovych make a come back after the 2004 election re-do. They promote “democracy” by assisting other countries w/ election tech. 🙄24/
Isn’t this rich? 25/ https://t.co/an5EU7ctlO
Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up. Again, Ken Blackwell chairs this group. 26/
Exit polls favoring Biden, not Trump. via @tdmsresearch 27/ https://t.co/rZFnvO1XuE
The greatest disparities [between exit polls and official results in 04] were concentrated in battleground states—particularly Ohio.” 28/

Quote from Harper’s article: https://t.co/WBkz0Kla5I
Article about DeVine working with Manafort to help the pro-Russia Yanukovych (discussed in post 1). 29/ https://t.co/xvGaE7RfWY
BTW, during the 2004 race between pro-Russia Yanukovych and pro-West Yuschenko, Yuschenko was poisoned with dioxin. According to the investigation, the poison was added to the rice which was served at the table."
30/ https://t.co/U2LR85AE0n
“Replying to the question if he believed the Russian leader Vladimir Putin was behind the poisoning Yushchenko replied: ‘I have an answer, but I cannot voice it.’” 31/

More from Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢

Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
Rs made gains in state legislatures in 2020. Even where manual audits are conducted, they rarely include state races. 😢

“Ds spent big to take control of state legislatures but lost their key targets. Now they’ll be on the sidelines as new maps are drawn”

I reported on the sorry state of election auditing laws in the US in this pre-election piece for @NYRDaily. This must change. #RobustManualAuditsNOW
1/

2/ “Earlier this year, ... Republicans blocked federal legislation, the SAFE Act, which would have required such [manual] audits for most federal races.”

3/ “America’s preeminent election-auditing expert, Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at...UCB, 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.” @philipbstark

4/ “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.” #HandMarkedPaperBallots
POLITICS
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
Agree. Also Bannon suggesting that Fauci shld be beheaded & Lyn Wood calling for Pence’s execution. These are Trump’s close advisors. Did Trump ever publicly disavow?
TRUMP
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Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
ES&S downplays problems w/ its voting machines. To know what occurred, we need public records requests. @RGarella did one in 2019 & found that, “‘poll workers & technicians reported issues with the new machines at more than 40 % of polling locations,’...1/

...[in Philadelphia], yet the voting machine vendor ES&S said that ‘it was ‘simply inaccurate’ for anyone to imply there were widespread issues.’” 2/

Although the GOP wants everyone focused on Dominion, it is ES&S that for years has arguably caused the most concern among election-integrity advocates and experts. I wrote about these concerns in detail here. 3/

Stacey Abrams’s group, Fair Fight Action, created this document detailing concerns with voting machine vendor ES&S, which had the Georgia contract before Georgia switched to Dominion. 4/

Look what happened on ES&S’s watch in Georgia in 2018. The situation w/ ES&S & these vanishing black votes was under congressional investigation when a court ordered Georgia to replace its old touchscreens in time for the 2020 election. 5/
POLITICS
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
Good news! The New York State Board of Elections voted yesterday to REJECT certification of ES&S’s ExpressVote XL all-in-one barcode ballot marking device (BMD), a glitchy & hackable touchscreen that ES&S has hoped officials would stupidly buy in lieu of pen and paper. 1/


I’m still trying to find out @NYSBOE’s reasoning, but I know one problem was that the ExpressVote XL runs on Windows 7 and can only mark ballots in English. If the XL were a person, it would be a MAGA. 2/

The XL has other problems. It runs the barcode “paper ballot” back under the printout AFTER the voter reviews it, which experts say means it could be maliciously programmed to eff with the barcode that is the only part of the “paper ballot” counted as your vote. 3/

Unfortunately, Philadelphia did choose the ES&S ExpressVote XL all-in-one ballot marking device (BMD), ignoring expert advice. I wrote about that unfortunate decision here in 2019. 4/

Here, for @NYRBooks, I also discuss problems involving the ES&S ExpressVote XL in PA in 2019. ES&S lobbyists had secretly donated to the two decision makers who then chose this system in Philly in lieu of #HandMarkedPaperBallots (pen & paper). 5/
SOCIETY
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
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.
POLITICS

More from Politics

Brian Cates
Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.
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Mike Dunford
Mike Dunford
@questauthority
THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)
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Christina Warren
Christina Warren
@film_girl
A brief thread on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the crazy con man who is now claiming to have hacked into the Georgia voting machines in Fulton County. 90s kids and tech aficionados might remember Jovan as the inventor of the CueCat, the dumbest gadget of all time.

Also, for anyone who wants to claim that Jovan Hutton Pulitzer (not his given name, but one he changed legally after the CueCat debacle) invented QR Codes: he did not. Like that other right-wing crazy man who claimed to have invented email, Jovan didn’t invent QR Codes.

He did invent the CueCat, a product that somehow raised $185 million dollars for a tethered barcode scanner for magazines and newspapers, so you could get ads from your ads. As I said, the dumbest product of all time. Good backup barcode scanners after they were hacked, however

Oh, that’s another thing. When CueCat was a thing, its systems were hacked. I guess that’s what makes Jovan a security expert. His bankrupt company from 20 years ago was hacked and widely mocked. He’s a genius.

In recent years, Jovan pivoted to being a treasure hunter who was featured on and widely mocked on Curse of Oak Island, because the man is insane.
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Mike Stuchbery \U0001f480\U0001f377
Mike Stuchbery 💀🍷...
@MikeStuchbery_
Andy Ngo thinks Antifa are on a level with the Nazis in terms of wanton violence. Furthermore, he says that 'even the Nazis knew to cover their tracks' and that we didn't know about the Holocaust until afterwards.

Wrong, and offensive on almost every level.


Violence had been building for years prior to the Nazis assuming power, and much of it was instigated by the SA.

In 1932 for example, 105 people died in clashes between SA and opposing groups in Prussia alone - that's one region.

SA activity - marching through 'red' neighbourhoods and fighting those who opposed them was a deliberate strategy. The spectacle of violence and the implied 'restoral of order' was the point.


Just think of how Horst Wessel was remembered following his death in 1930. He was turned into a martyr who fell 'bravely in battle' against the Bolsheviks. Violence was inherent to the message - a clash between forces for the future of Germany.


During his time as SA leader in Berlin, Goebbels worked on a strategy of provocation that almost always ended in violence, a form of trolling that would always provide the opportunity for a brawl and the implication that a menace had been dealt with.
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Brossentia @ Home!
Brossentia @ Home!
@Brossentia
Watching the Congress hearing on Gamestop/Robinhood/Reddit. I'll let people know if there's anything super interesting.

Right now, it seems like both Democrats and Republicans are sympathetic with average Americans rather than the companies. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

I kind of like Rep. Patrick McHenry's (R) take. Basically, he says it's dumb that it's easier to buy a lottery ticket than to invest.

Now, Congressional hearings in committees are often more about figuring out problems than attacking each other; I fully expect both Democrats and Republicans to have good insight here.

Rep. Al Green says that fines -have- to outweigh the benefits from breaking the law. I completely agree.
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Antonio Garc\xeda Mart\xednez
Antonio García Martíne...
@antoniogm
Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.


The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.
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Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Samayapuram Mariamman Temple
#Trichy
#Tamilnadutemples 🚩

Samayapuram Mariamman Temple is located in Samayapuram of
 Tiruchirappalli district.  Mariyamman here is worshipped as Samayapurathal a form of Parashakti.
Amman vigraham here is made of sand and clay so


no abhishekam done to the main vigraham. Samayapuram Mariamman Temple is one of the famous Shakthi Sthal of Tamilnadu.

Story says that paramashiva created Kali, out of the poison that he drank during samudra mathanam.  As Devi originated from the Kaalakoota/ halahala poison,


thus the name Kaali. Mariamman is believed to be a form of Kaali, and is also known as Mahamayi. It is also believed that Maharaja Dasharatha offered his prayers here.

Mariamman is Parashakti herself who blesses with prosperity and she is believed to cure all diseases.


Paramashiva, Mahavishnu and Brahma Deva are believed to have taken blessings of Mariamman here.

Om Shakti Para Shakti
🙏🕉🙏
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Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
SRI KANTESH HANUMANTHA, KADARAMANDALAGI (KAR)
#bharatmandir

KANTESHA means Prabhu full of brightness.
Here, Sri Hanuman appears with a front face and sparkling eyes. Earlier, the village was also called KANTESHPURI on the name of Kantesha Hanuman.


Several thousands of years ago, Hanuman lived in this village. He once saw the Sun and mistaking it to be a fruit, began flying towards it. Since then, this village came to be known as Kadara Man Dalagi. (Kadar means rays, mandala is cluster of rays).


It is believed that King Janmejaya had set up the shrine to get rid of his difficulties.
There is a small pond on the right side of the kshetram where Teppotsava (Float festival) is celebrated.

Kanaka Dasa has praised Sri Kantesha in his various poetic compositions.


Kanaka Dasa was the first devotee to popularize the power of Kantesha. It is said that once Kanaka Dasa was deeply wounded in a battle. To seek blessings, he visited Tirupati but Sri Venkatesha appeared in his dream and advised him to see Kantesha first before seeing him.
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80 Films with the biggest Plot Twists that will blow your mind.

1. Fight Club


2. Predestination


3. Seven


4. Requiem for a Dream
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Janmajit Sinha
Janmajit Sinha
@Impregnable007
#Thread - 1/21

A story of a brave woman who let her "breast" cut to protect the life of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose!

Neera Arya was born on March 5 1902 in Khekra Nagar, Uttar Pradesh in a distinguished & eminent businessman Seth Chhajumal's family. Since her childhood,


2/21
She was a true nationalist & always had a vision of becoming a part of the freedom fighter movement. She was also reportedly accused as an undercover by the British Govt.

That was the time when her father's business was flourishing in Calcutta, though his business was..

3/21
spread across the country but Calcutta was the center of his business and that was one of the reasons why her education was done in Calcutta. During that period of time, she had learned quite a few languages along with Bengali, Hindi, English.

4/21
Her father got her married to a CID Inspector "Shrikant Jairanjan Das" in British India but they were two different individuals, Neera Arya was a true nationalist but her husband was a true British servant. She was highly motivated & she had an urge of getting us freedom..

5/21
so she ended up joining the Jhansi Regiment in Azad Hind Fauz after the marriage. It was the regiment that the British always accused them of spying on British Govt.

It was the time when Neera's husband Jairanjan Das was given the responsibility to spy on Netaji Subhash..
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