2020 US Election - Current Events

[Z.W. Wolf]

There's nothing wrong with the machines. The perception that there is comes from a disinformation campaign. Trump started the rigged election narrative last summer simply by inventing it out of nothing and repeating it relentlessly. After election day the disinformation campaign became a high-volume firehose of lies from multiple sources.

See this thread: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/the-firehosing-propaganda-technique.11472/

A real complication was created by Rep state legislatures passing laws forbidding mail ballots to be processed/counted before election day.

See this thread: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ex...ts-and-data-dumps-in-the-2020-election.11471/

This article is apropos to our current situation.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/...ability-to-fake-news?utm_source=pocket-newtab

A 2017 study published in the journal Intelligence suggests that some people may have an especially difficult time rejecting misinformation. The study is significant because it identifies what may be a major risk factor for vulnerability to fake news.

...researchers ... first had over 400 subjects take a personality test. ...assigned each subject to one of two conditions. In the experimental condition, the subjects read a biographical description of a young woman named Nathalie. ....Nathalie, a nurse at a local hospital, "was arrested for stealing drugs from the hospital; she has been stealing drugs for 2 years and selling them on the street in order to buy designer clothes."

The subjects then rated Nathalie on traits such as trustworthiness and sincerity, after which they took a test of cognitive ability. Finally, the subjects saw a message on their computer screen explicitly stating that the information about Nathalie stealing drugs and getting arrested was not true, and then rated her again on the same traits. The control condition was identical, except that subjects were not given the paragraph with the false information and rated Nathalie only once.

The subjects in the experimental condition initially rated Nathalie much more negatively than did the subjects in the control condition. This was not surprising, considering that they had just learned she was a thief and a drug dealer. The interesting question was whether cognitive ability would predict attitude adjustment—that is, the degree to which the subjects in the experimental condition would rate Nathalie more favorably after being told that this information was false.

It did: subjects high in cognitive ability adjusted their ratings more than did those lower in cognitive ability. The subjects with lower cognitive ability had more trouble shaking their negative first impression of Nathalie. This was true even after the researchers statistically controlled for the subjects' level of open-mindedness (their willingness to change their mind when wrong) and right-wing authoritarianism (their intolerance toward others), as assessed by the personality test. Thus, even if a person was open-minded and tolerant, a low level of cognitive ability put them at risk for being unjustifiably harsh in their second evaluation of Nathalie.

Later in the same article...

...other research ....on the mechanisms underlying the effects of misinformation. Repeating a false claim increases its believability... Known as the illusion of truth effect, .

On each of three days, subjects listened to plausible-sounding statements and rated each on whether they thought it was true. Half of the statements were in fact true, ....the other half were false.

Some of the statements were repeated across days, whereas others were presented only once. The results showed that the average truth rating increased from day to day for the repeated statements, but remained constant for the non-repeated statements, indicating that subjects mistook familiarity for verity.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Just catching up on the news...

NYT

WASHINGTON — Incensed by a Supreme Court ruling that further dashed President Trump's hopes of invalidating his November electoral defeat, thousands of his supporters marched in Washington and several state capitals on Saturday to protest what they contended, against all evidence, was a stolen election.

In some places, angry confrontations between protesters and counterprotesters escalated into violence. There were a number of scuffles in the national capital, where four people were stabbed, and the police declared a riot in Olympia, Wash., where one person was shot.

In videos of a clash in Olympia that were posted on social media, a single gunshot can be heard as black-clad counterprotesters move toward members of the pro-Trump group, including one person waving a large Trump flag. After the gunshot, one of the counterprotesters is seen falling to the ground, and others call for help. In one video, a man with a gun can be seen running from the scene and putting on a red hat.

Chris Loftis, a spokesman for the Washington State Patrol, said that two people were in custody in connection with the episode but that specific details about the shooting were not yet clear, including the condition of the person who was shot.

The phrase "Texas Lawsuit Affair" might become a part of history. We've just seen a significant political incident and a significant escalation in public unrest. I hope this doesn't escalate from here. Once serious violence starts, it's hard to put the lid back on.

 

[Mendel]

I think it's time to stop going round and round. You've made your point. I disagree. This isn't going to go away by being understanding. It has to be exposed and met with moral firmness. The target is these elected officials who don't believe the election has been stolen.

Draw your line of "moral firmness" at the use of force (or the condoning of the use of force). You'll get a bigger majority united on your side; and you're actually one with the law if you do. And the article I quoted before explains why that is the best course of action: because prosecuting people for saying things you do not like (or bringing lawsuits you don't like) never worked out well, historically.

THIS is seditious talk (emphasis mine):

Article:

Conspiracy theorist and internet personality Alex Jones told a crowd of pro-Trump protesters in Washington, D.C. on Saturday that President-elect Joe Biden "will be removed one way or another," while addressing the protesters from a stage.
[..]
"We will never back down to the Satanic pedophile, globalist New World Order and their walking-dead reanimated corpse Joe Biden, and we will never recognize him," he said.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/alex-jones-million-maga-march-trump-supporters-joe-biden-removed-1554361

 

[Mendel]

Article:

Why The Numbers Behind Mitch McConnell's Re-Election Don't Add Up

[..]

• McConnell racked up huge vote leads in traditionally Democratic strongholds, including counties that he had never before carried.
• There were wide, unexplained discrepancies between the vote counts for presidential candidates and down-ballot candidates.
• Significant anomalies exist in the state's voter records. Forty percent of the state's counties carry more voters on their rolls than voting-age citizens.
• Kentucky and many other states using vote tabulation machines made by Election Systems & Software all reported down-ballot race results at significant odds with pre-election polls.

[..]
In rural Breathitt County, for instance, there are 9,508 registered Democrats and just 1,599 registered Republicans. The county has a history of close contests, but Amy McGrath got only 1,652 votes versus 3,738 for McConnell, a 67% to 29% trouncing. McGrath's votes, if accurate, equaled only 17% of registered Democrats in Breathitt County.
[..]

Next, take the premise that there would be some basic logic in the voting patterns of those who did vote Democratic. One might expect a registered Democrat, who's going to vote Democratic, would walk into the booth and cast votes for both Joe Biden and Amy McGrath. But the data tell another story. In 119 of 120 counties, Amy McGrath got more votes than Joe Biden. In some counties, the votes were close. But in counties like Breathitt and Elliott, 1 out of 5 voters appear to have filled out their ballots with votes for both the female Democrat Amy McGrath and the Republican [..] Donald Trump.

[..]
In a Dec. 4 filing in Georgia, Trump's legal team referred to a "machine-controlled algorithm deliberately run" by a voting machine vendor, Dominion Voting Systems. They allege this algorithm "generally took more than 2.5% of the votes from Mr. Biden and flipped them to Mr. Trump." So Trump's own legal team, instead of providing evidence of fraud by Biden's side, may have inadvertently revealed fraud benefiting Trump. In describing a deliberate, vendor installed, machine-controlled algorithm automatically taking a percentage of Biden's votes and giving them to Trump, they certainly are outlining how fraud could have been executed.

Trump's team claims Dominion was the machine vendor embedding algorithms to "flip" votes but is Trump pointing to one machine vendor to distract from another?

In Kentucky, when looking at counties where the numbers leap out on behalf of Mitch McConnell, none used Dominion machines. Most used machines from Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a Dominion competitor. If you swap ES&S for Dominion in the alleged vote-flipping scheme, you may arrive at an alternate explanation for why Amy McGrath's numbers weren't lining up and correlating with Biden's.

To steal an election it may make sense to use different algorithms for each race on the ballot so results did not appear to be uniform. Knowing the McGrath-McConnell race faced more nationwide scrutiny, schemers might have had to miscount votes by different margins in the presidential and Senate races. Flipping more votes from Biden to Trump than McGrath votes to McConnell would explain her getting approximately 20% more votes than the Democratic presidential candidate.

Source: https://www.dcreport.org/2020/12/19/mitch-mcconnells-re-election-the-numbers-dont-add-up/

 

[Mendel]

Has anyone spotted the omission in the article I quoted in my previous post?
It doesn't mention any polls, neither pre-election polls nor exit polls.

Article:

The latest polling by Morning Consult shows McConnell ahead of McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot, by just over 11 percentage points. The GOP lawmaker is supported by 51.1 percent of Kentucky's voters while the Democrat is backed by just 39.8 percent. McConnell's lead is well outside the poll's margin of error, which is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/what-polls-say-about-mitch-mcconnell-vs-amy-mcgrath-less-24-hours-election-1544133

The statistical election analysis is meaningless because it didn't take into account how people wanted to vote.

Reality simply doesn't fit the voting machine fraud theory. Amy McGrath conceded the race on November 4th.

 

[Mendel]

Another court case, brought by Rep. Louis Gohmert (R, Texas) got thrown out today:

Article:

Though there are no "competing electors—the election results in every U.S. state have been certified and the Electoral College votes for Biden have been cast—Gohmert and the other plaintiffs claimed the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) violates the Twelfth Amendment by not allowing the VP to count uncertified votes cast by Trump's so-called slate of "shadow electors." The Twelfth Amendment only dictates that the VP, as president of the Senate, "open all the certificates" and nothing more.

The Gohmert lawsuit asserted that an incumbent vice president who lost reelection, like Pence, rather than ministerially counting certified electoral votes may unilaterally decide not to count certain ones in order to secure his own reelection. Plaintiffs asked Judge Kernodle to find ahead of Jan. 6 that the ECA is "unconstitutional" and conflicts with the Twelfth Amendment because it renders Pence a merely ministerial rubber-stamper.

"[Pence] may exercise the exclusive authority and sole discretion in determining which electoral votes to count for a given state, and must ignore and may not rely on any provisions of the Electoral Count Act that would limit his exclusive authority and his sole discretion to determine the count, which could include votes from the slates of Republican electors from the Contested States," the suit asserted earlier in the week.

The DOJ, on VP Pence's behalf, noted on New Year's Eve that Gohmert was attempting to "empower the Vice President to unilaterally and unreviewably decide objections to the validity of electoral votes, notwithstanding the Electoral Count Act."

Source: https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/judge-throws-out-rep-louie-gohmert-and-fake-electors-lawsuit-against-vice-president-mike-pence/

Basically, following that legal theory, a VP can simply not open the electoral votes for counting that are disfavorable, and thus ensure that voters can't ever take the power from his party. Thinking that this can and should happen in a democracy is pretty far down the rabbit hole, if you ask me.

As far as I know, VP Mike Pence is going to open all certified electoral votes from all states.

 

[Mendel]

More on the Gohmert case:

Article:

Bottom line is, the court is saying, 'we're not going to touch this, you have no remedy,'" Gohmert said. "Basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you've got to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM."

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/01/louie-gohmert-lawsuit-pence-453387

And this:

Article:

My concern is with the central factual premise of the case, which appears to be untrue, and which therefore raises questions about the attorneys' responsibility for bringing the suit. Paragraph 5 of the complaint states,

"The Arizona Electors have cast Arizona's electoral votes for President Donald J. Trump on December 14, 2020, at the Arizona State Capitol with the permission and endorsement of the Arizona Legislature" (emphasis added).

As far as I can tell, the bolded passage is a false statement of fact. The 11 Trump electors evidently did meet at the state capitol on December 14, when they purportedly cast their votes for the Trump/Pence ticket, but their actions were not endorsed by the Arizona legislature. Instead, it appears that they had the support of only 22 Arizona legislators (out of 90), who signed a self-styled "joint resolution" calling on Congress to accept the "alternate 11 electoral votes . . . for Donald J. Trump."

As noted on the Excess of Democracy blog, the so-called "joint resolution" has no bill number and is not enrolled on any official legislative record. The 22 signatories include only five state senators, who could not possibly constitute a majority of that chamber even under the minimum quorum requirements in the Arizona Constitution. (The resolution was also signed by eight members-elect, who have no legal votes at all.)

In other words, the claim that the Republican electors had the endorsement of the Arizona Legislature is untrue. A later paragraph misleadingly states that "members of the Arizona Legislature passed a joint resolution," implying that there had been a formal vote that "passed" the resolution, and without revealing that only 22 sitting legislators signed the document. This is precisely the sort of pleading that is prohibited by Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which requires that all "factual allegations have evidentiary support." Rule 3.3(a)(1) of the Rules of Professional Conduct likewise prohibits making "a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal."

Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/532289-that-louie-gohmert-lawsuit

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://twitter.com/TheUSASingers/status/1345384869749207045?s=20

"This is a picture of Georgians standing in line for 10 hours to vote." (for the runoff elections for the US senate)

 

[JMartJr]

As far as I know, VP Mike Pence is going to open all certified electoral votes from all states.

It may be signifcant that VP Pence petitioned the court against the complaint brought by Gohmert. Had he, at that time, been planning shenanigans, Gohmert prevailing would have given him cover, and I'd have expected him to file in support, or remain silent. We'll see in a few days, I suppose.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

A significant Red Mirage was predicted but so far hasn't been seen

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Both Reps have small leads now, but NYT has both Dems favored because almost nothing has been heard from the Atlanta area.

Win Probability
Warnock 80%
Ossoff 66%

 

[Mendel]

It's swinging back and forth. DeKalb was a huge boost for the democrats; and of course some absentee ballots are still out as well.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3W61jgMOq8

(Stirling is making a statement on this Stream right now.)

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

The Red Mirage showed up late and it showed up weak. But the Blue Shift is happening in the form of votes from the Atlanta area, much as it did in the presidential election. The Dems have won the Senate.


But here comes the next conspiracy theory. The mysterious votes that appeared out of nowhere when the Dems saw they were losing.

But the Reps did it to themselves. It was their election to lose and they lost it. They suppressed their own vote with the stolen election narrative. Just enough radical Trumpists stayed away because, "My vote won't count in this rigged election." Now they'll be sure this one was rigged, because, "The only way we could lose this election is if the election was rigged." A downward spiral.

Senate Republicans will be cursing Trump's name in the morning. He sabotaged this election to strengthen his own stolen election narrative.

 

[deirdre]

Senate Republicans will be cursing Trump's name in the morning

the Dems were offering cash (and lots of cash, Biden even promised a 3rd round of stimulus checks) money during a pandemic. That's kinda hard to beat.

But dont say dems won and jinx it. 24000 military votes havent come in yet and they say all that is left to be counted is ballots dropped off today. Dems typically vote early, not the day of.

anyway dont jinx it!!!

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Another fallacy the Alt-Right media is promoting. Not military - overseas. There's a civilian vote also.

-28,000 military ballots
-12,000 civilian ballots

-The military vote for Trump in Georgia, in general, was not what was expected in the presidential race. Same across the country. Number one reason according to sources I've heard: Betraying the Kurds with the Syria pullout soured many in the military against Trump. That is admittedly non-scientific.

It remains to be seen what the military vote will look like for the Republican Candidates in this election.

-The civilian overseas vote traditionally leans pretty heavily Democrat, nationwide. I admittedly don't know about Georgia specifically.

Bottom line is the overseas vote won't have any effect on the outcome.

AP has already called for Warnock, who has a 49,845 lead; which will continue to grow, as most of the estimated 80,000 outstanding ballots are going to be something between 80-90% in favor of Warnock. How would a split 40,000 ballots change that?

It will probably be daylight before they call for Ossoff. The same logic holds. The votes are now coming from DeKalb County and other heavily Democratic districts. To illustrate, these are the latest numbers for Ossoff.

NYT-

	New Votes	Expected	Actual	New estimate of final margin
19m ago	3,403	D+94	D+96	Ossoff +1.1
1h ago	6,398	D+82	D+89	Ossoff +1.1
1h ago	6,200	D+75	D+77	Ossoff +1.1

The same pattern is occurring, as in the presidential election. Milwaukee in Wisconsin. Detroit in Michigan. Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. And Atlanta in Georgia. These urban areas are where the decisive votes came from late in the counting process. That's what is happening now.



In addition:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/05/overseas-voters-georgia-senate/
Jan. 5, 2021 at 5:20 p.m. EST

USPS delays could hit Georgia military, overseas ballots

Only 4,000 of the nearly 28,000 military ballots have been returned, according to agency spokesman Walter Jones. Among the civilians, 6,000 ballots have returned, roughly half of the total issued.

...the hoops that overseas and military voters have to jump through to vote securely from abroad have been complicated by pandemic lockdowns and curfews and mail delays in various countries, as well as Postal Service delays on the U.S. side of the mail chain. Some voters have resorted to paying extra for express delivery through private mail carriers, checking their ballot trackers daily and calling their local elections offices to make sure their ballots arrived. In some cases, ballots mailed a month ago still haven't shown up.

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and chief executive of Overseas Vote, part of the nonprofit U.S. Vote Foundation, said she's doubtful the steps the U.S. Postal Service has taken to expedite the delivery of mail-in ballots will be enough for overseas ballots to make it in time.

What just happened to cause this race to be called for Raphael Warnock - and you see the official call on our screen – we got another batch of votes from Dekalb county. We've been talking about Dekalb county. We didn't get all of the outstanding vote, but we got about 6,000 more votes.

There were about 18,000 outstanding... about a third of the remaining vote just came in; Warnock won 91% of the new vote that just came in. So extremely Democratic vote that just came in. That, what that does to Warnock's lead statewide; it pushes it over 40,000, to a full point - again, still more than 10,000 votes to come in Dekalb county.

You see the dramatic effect that updates from Dekalb county are having; and more will push the lead out further for him.

 

[deirdre]

Another fallacy the Alt-Right media is promoting.

It was on ABC. You give us MSNBC yet members here keep accusing me of getting all my info from alt right sources? pfft.

from your post

28000-4000= 24,000. military votes. which is what i said.

 

[Mendel]

It was on ABC. You give us MSNBC yet members here keep accusing me of getting all my info from alt right sources? pfft.

I was listening to the abc feed, as far as I recall they always referred to it as "military and overseas".

Another fallacy the Alt-Right media is promoting. Not military - overseas. There's a civilian vote also.

Have you seen them promoting it? Can you cite it?

Are you referring to the Trump-Raffensperger phone call?

Trump: And what about that batch of military ballots that came in. And even though I won the military by a lot, it was 100 percent Trump. I mean 100 percent Biden. Do you know about that? A large group of ballots came in. I think it was to Fulton County and they just happened to be 100 percent for Trump — for Biden, even though Trump won the military by a lot, you know, a tremendous amount. But these ballots were 100 percent for Biden. And, do you know about that? A very substantial number came in, all for Biden. Does anybody know about it?

Mitchell: I know about it, but —

Trump: OK, Cleta, I'm not asking you Cleta, honestly. I'm asking Brad. Do you know about the military ballots that we have confirmed now. Do you know about the military ballots that came in that were 100 percent, I mean 100 percent for Biden. Do you know about that?

Germany: I don't know about that, I do know that we have when military ballots come in, it's not just military, it's also military and overseas citizens. The military part of that does generally go Republican. The overseas citizen part of it generally goes very Democrat. This was a mix of 'em.

 

[deirdre]

I was listening to the abc feed, as far as I recall they always referred to it as "military and overseas".

i was pointing out possible areas republican votes could be found in a tight race. military votes typically lean right. i dont think the various phrasing matters that much to my point
but yea we were watching the same coverage. the military votes are overseas too. I think my brainwashing Overlords at ABC were very clear the military votes they meant were from overseas. They said Georgia only accepts late delivery ballots if they are from overseas. My Overlords said they have till Friday to come in. and that 24000 is just ballots sent out, that doesn't mean everyone will send a ballot back in.

Hope ive been specific enough for Wolf this time

(ps. they also used the phrase "find votes" at least twice. and i doubt they were insinuating fraudulently changing ballots.)

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

It was on ABC. You give us MSNBC yet members here keep accusing me of getting all my info from alt right sources? pfft.

from your post

View attachment 42619


28000-4000= 24,000. military votes. which is what i said.

Come now. You were implying that when they come they will do such and such. Otherwise why mention them? They will do nothing.

They won't come in. Some of the 24,000 will come in. And a few more of the civilian overseas vote will also show up, adding to the 6,000 ballots which lean Democratic. So the net gain for the GOP candidates will be...? (Very little.)

Let's say all of the 28,000 military ballots came in and they go 65% Rep. That's 18,200 Rep and 9,800 Dem for a net gain of 8,400. And let's say no more civilian ballots come in and the 6,000 that have come in go 60% Dem. That's 3,600 Dem and 2,400 Rep for a net Dem gain of 1,200.

8,400 - 1,200 = 7,200 net gain for the Rep candidates. If anyone at ABC was saying these ballots might make a difference they were imagining a much tighter race.

Indications are that Ossoff's final lead will be over 20,000.

 

[deirdre]

as far as future conspiracy issues.. (i have to get to work so will search later for timestamp) this guy said they scanned soemthing twice because of using 2 usbs for some reason. i forget how he phrased it but i thought. uh oh! that's gonna spark some conspiracy theories.

edit add here at the 5 min mark.
(3) Live | Facebook
Source: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1018553118632053&ref=watch_permalink

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Decision Desk has called the election for Ossoff but AP et al. will probably wait until Fulton County reports the count of 7,500 mail ballots (in one batch, not incrementally) "sometime this afternoon." They're going to want Ossoff's lead to be over 0.5% before they pull the trigger. But realistically there's nowhere for Perdue to get the votes to stay even with the count as it stands, let alone erase a lead of 17,025. (Which is already higher than Biden's final count of 11,779.)

 

[Mendel]

as far as future conspiracy issues.. (i have to get to work so will search later for timestamp) this guy said they scanned soemthing twice because of using 2 usbs for some reason. i forget how he phrased it but i thought. uh oh! that's gonna spark some conspiracy theories.
View attachment 42620


edit add here at the 5 min mark.
(3) Live | Facebook
Source: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1018553118632053&ref=watch_permalink

I heard that last night, it's on the Now This stream (and the abc stream too at 4:53:07) that I linked on our runoff thread. It was from Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager in Georgia, and took place some time after midnight, I believe.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5pNkbhok9s&t=4h18m57s

4:18:57 The biggest thing we had hangin' out there were those really, the really giant tranche of DeKalb County advance votes. They may load the additional 20,000 tonight and maybe tomorrow, depending on how they have to work through the two memory cards they're dealing with.
And what all that was: they sent two scanners out to the advance voting locations, and instead of making individuals cards for each one, they only made two, so they could upload one or the other, so they're likely going to have to rescan some of the stuff out of the two ballot boxes.

 

[deirdre]

It was from Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager in Georgia,

who is a republican and tweeted before the election for people to vote for Perdue and Kelly. (just adding because in politics information from people you trust is paramount. Of course he is a "foodie" so... )
Gabriel Sterling on Twitter: "I encourage any of you that haven't voted yet here in Georgia, you have between 7am-7pm at your polling location. And as much as this may disappoint some, please join me in voting for Senators Perdue and Loeffler. A divided government will serve Americans best right now. #gapol" / Twitter

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3W61jgMOq8&6h16m50s

Late night/early morning WSB-TV interview with Gabriel Sterling:

You can't hack paper.

The Republicans, Democrats, really loaded up on observers this time.

6:18:27 Fulton, there was an argument about the distance at which they could stand to watch some of those things, and some opaque barriers. They went to court this afternoon, the Republicans, they got a consent order to basically allow for closer inspection, take down the opaque barriers, which they shouldn't have had those opaque barriers there to begin with.
But there's a few things here and there, but out of 159 counties, you're always going to have some people who are going to be siding more heavily on the security side than on the transparency side. We want to err on transparency when it comes to [the] public watching this process move forward.

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3W61jgMOq8&5h46m59s

Gabriel Sterling: At some point, the election's the elections, the outcomes are the outcomes, we got to realize in two years we get to fight for these things again, and I will agree with Reverend Warnock -- and I said this in my earlier press conference --: we have to learn to disagree with each other, and be civil while doing it, because these are our neighbors, these are our people who we live in our communities with.

 

[Mendel]

Rally in front of the White House. It's hard to bear listening to the lies being told. Professor John C. Eastman (wikipedia: "Eastman drew controversy in 2020 for an op-ed which falsely suggested that then-presumed Democratic nominee for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was not an American citizen") starts speaking (~36 minutes in).


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhSiQBLln0M&t=36m13s

John C. Eastman: We've got petitions pending before the Supreme Court that identify in chapter and verse the number of times state election officials ignored or violated the state law in order to put Vice President Biden over the finish line. We know there was fraud, traditional fraud, that occurred. We know that dead people voted. But we now know because we caught it live, last time, in real time, how the machines contributed to that fraud. And let me, as simply as I can, explain it: you know the old way was to have a bunch of ballots sitting in a box under the floor, and when you needed more, you pulled them out in the dark of night. They put those ballots in a secret folder in the machine, sitting there waiting until they know how many they need, and then the machine, after the close the polls, we now know who's voted, and we know who hasn't, and I can now in that machine match those unvoted ballots with an unvoted voter and put 'em together in the machine. And how do we know that happened last night in real time? You saw when it got to 99% of the vote total, and then it stopped. The percentage stopped, but the votes didn't stop. What happened -- and you don't see this on Fox or any other stations -- the data shows that the denominator, how many ballots remain to be counted, how else do you figure out the percentage that you have, how many remain to be counted, that number started moving up. That means they were unloading the ballots from that secret folder, matching them, matching them to the unvoted voter, and voila, we have enough votes to barely get over the finish line. We saw it happen in real time last night, and it happened on November 3rd as well. And all we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at 1 o'clock, he let the legislatures of the state look into this, so we get to the bottom of it, and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not.

The machine counts are audited, and in the battleground states recounted against the paper ballots; for in-person voters, the poll books that register in each precinct every voter who came and cast their ballot; the signed and dated envelopes for the absentee ballots. You can't "pull them out in the dark of night". It's all a lie, and every informed person knows this.

 

[Mendel]

and voila, we have enough votes to barely get over the finish line.

That's what Trump demanded of Raffensperger in the phone call we've all listened to by now: to "find" enough votes to do just that.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

This is bizarre. A seditious president whipping up a mob in front of the White House. He's already announced the mob is going to march to the Capitol Building.

We can never take this back. We're diminished.

 

[Mendel]

Same stream as above,

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhSiQBLln0M&t=1h45m30s

[1:45:30] Trump: We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election. [..][1:46:35] Does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes?

[1:46:50] Trump: You could take third world countries, just take a look, third world countries, their elections are more honest than what we've been going through in this country, it's a disgrace.

The Trump campaign has not discovered a single voter who was documented as having voted who did not vote.

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhSiQBLln0M&t=2h35m35s


at about 2:36:00

Trump: Not a single swing state has conducted a comprehensive audit to remove the illegal ballots.

False. All of the battleground states have conducted comprehensive audits as part of the certification process, and in States like Georgia, full recounts have been conducted on the paper ballots.

 

[Mick West]

Things are getting dangerous outside the Capitol.


Source: https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1346887252216000517

 

[Mendel]

12 minutes of joint session; Pence processed the official return from Arkansas, and a formal objection was raised, with no reasoning. The Senate now retires to its chamber.

That's basically what we expected would happen, given that Pence didn't seem willing to overstep his limits.

 

[deirdre]

Pence processed the official return from Arkansas, and a formal objection was raised, with no reasoning. The Senate now retires to its chamber.

do they have to do each objection separately? jeez.

 

[Mendel]

Livestream from outside the Capitol

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot91KcESV6w

I just heard a bang.

 

[Mendel]

do they have to do each objection separately? jeez.

Yes. That's what all commentators agreed before that the process would be. I think I quoted a congress document describing this session somewhere in this subforum when the issue came up.

 

[Mick West]

Pence declined Trump's request while Trump was giving a speech encouraging him to reject the certifications.

Article:

Pence said in a letter that he did not believe, as Trump has claimed, that a vice president has the power to reject some Electoral College votes for a candidate.

"It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not," Pence wrote in his three-page letter addressed to members of Congress.

His dramatic break from Trump came minutes before the Republican vice president began presiding over a joint session of Congress, which is meeting to declare the former Democratic vice president Biden the victor.

Pence said in his letter that he shared "the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the this election," which Trump and his supporters have claimed without evidence was corrupted by widespread ballot fraud.

But Pence also wrote that "vesting the Vice President with unilateral authortity to decide presidential contests would be entirely antithetical to" the system of check-and-balances between branches of the government designed by the framers of the Constitution.

"The Presidency belongs to the American people, and to them alone," Pence wrote.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/06/mike-pence-rejects-trumps-call-to-overturn-biden-election.html

 

[Mendel]

Senate Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell spoke in the Senate deliberation on the Arkansas objection (about 2:30 in).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKy84YmL-sU

Mitch McConnell: We're debating a step that has never been taken in American history: whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a presidential election. [..] President Trump claims the election was stolen. [..] Over and over, the courts have rejected these claims. [..] Nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale that would tilt the entire election. Nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence. [..] We cannot simply declare ourselves a national board of elections on steroids. [..] The voters, the courts, the states have all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever.

 

[Mendel]

More from Mitch McConnell's speech:

Mitch McConnell: Self-government requires a shared commitment to the truth, and a shared respect for the ground rules of our system. We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate reality with nothing in common except our hostiliy towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.

This is a powerful speech.

 

[Mendel]

This is bizarre. A seditious president whipping up a mob in front of the White House. He's already announced the mob is going to march to the Capitol Building.

Can you find that in the youtube live stream for me? I'm not listening to the whole Trump speech for that bit, and I'd like to know what exactly he said.

 

[Mendel]

Article:

Senate suddenly recesses, Pence whisked away as protests escalate

The Senate suddenly recessed Wednesday afternoon around 2:15 p.m. ET as pro-Trump protests escalated.

Vice President Mike Pence was ushered quickly out of the Senate chamber as it recessed and the debate between senators had to stop mid-speech. The House also recessed.

Police are telling staff and reporters to get inside rooms because the building has been breached.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/live-blog/electoral-college-certification-updates-n1252864