Scrutable

Arf

Twitter now alerts Trump that Biden is president every time he lies about election fraud

In any other reality, this recording of Trump threatening and coercing Brad Raffensperger to find votes in Georgia would end in a cell. But this is not that reality.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/po ... video.html

Vertigowooyay wrote: Sun Jan 03, 2021 8:16 pm In any other reality, this recording of Trump threatening and coercing Brad Raffensperger to find votes in Georgia would end in a cell. But this is not that reality.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/po ... video.html

I assumed this would have been a recently leaked recording made weeks ago, but no - this was yesterday. Trump actually still thinks he's in with a shot of stealing the election if he bullies the right people. It's absolutely amazing.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Sun Jan 03, 2021 11:03 pm

Vertigowooyay wrote: Sun Jan 03, 2021 8:16 pm In any other reality, this recording of Trump threatening and coercing Brad Raffensperger to find votes in Georgia would end in a cell. But this is not that reality.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/po ... video.html

I assumed this would have been a recently leaked recording made weeks ago, but no - this was yesterday. Trump actually still thinks he's in with a shot of stealing the election if he bullies the right people. It's absolutely amazing.

Read the full transcript - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html

It is *demented*. He veers from flattery to pleading to threats but all the while he’s like a rabbit trapped in a snare. There are so many state laws being broken. It’s jaw dropping. And the c.nt will just sail away from it leaving his country in flames.

I struggle to read him at the best of time. He sounds like a poor-quality AI procedurally generating a mob lawyer.

It'll be interesting to see if any other states try to get ahead of this by revealing that they had similar calls. Can GA be the only one?

Also, as these are state crimes, presumably Georgia could prosecute Trump after he's left the presidency, like New York probably will, without it setting a precedent for federal government to prosecute former presidents. I suppose that would depend on whether Trump has served his usefulness to the GOP.

John Dean, someone with more than a passing experience with incriminating recordings, thinks it was recorded and leaked by the WH.

Presumably the stable genius's next move is to anonymously send the NY Times an email with the attachment "FIS Kompromat File 094 - Russian hotel Watersports recording - Two girls, One Trump.mp4"

Nice two line summary

Little waster wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:43 am Presumably the stable genius's next move is to anonymously send the NY Times an email with the attachment "FIS Kompromat File 094 - Russian hotel Watersports recording - Two girls, One Trump.mp4"

Stupid Watergate was so 2020, we're now into Deranged Watergate

Grumble wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:28 am Nice two line summary

That does sum it up perfectly!

I'm interested to see how things pan out on the 6th.

US democracy is devolving into the kind of farce usually associated with corrupt backwater hell holes. Raffensberger recorded Trump as a precaution, then released the recording when Trump made accusations that Raffensberger was ignoring evidence of election fraud.

So why not record the call with the president, Raffensperger’s advisers thought, if nothing else for fact-checking purposes. “This is a man who has a history of reinventing history as it occurs,” one of them told Playbook. “So if he’s going to try to dispute anything on the call, it’s nice to have something like this, hard evidence, to dispute whatever he’s claiming about the secretary. Lindsey Graham asked us to throw out legally cast ballots. So yeah, after that call, we decided maybe we should do this.”

The call took place Saturday afternoon. “Mr. President,” announced Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, at the top of the call, “everyone is on the line.” Little did he know. Trump made his ask and did most of the talking for the next hour, trafficking in the same conspiracy theories about election fraud that no court or criminal investigator has found credible. At the end of the call, Trump complains, “What a schmuck I was.”

Raffensperger’s team kept quiet about the call and the recording and waited. The president made the next move, claiming on Sunday morning via Twitter that Raffensperger was “unwilling, or unable, to answer” questions about his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. “Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true,” Raffensperger replied at 10:27 a.m. “The truth will come out.” It wasn’t an empty promise.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/pl ... all-491268

jimbob wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:26 am

Little waster wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:43 am Presumably the stable genius's next move is to anonymously send the NY Times an email with the attachment "FIS Kompromat File 094 - Russian hotel Watersports recording - Two girls, One Trump.mp4"

Stupid Watergate was so 2020, we're now into Deranged Watergate

See Lin Wood for details, Trump's legal advisor who claims that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court being forced to rape a child at gun point, and that he has the videotapes of this which are also being used to blackmail the Supreme Court.

dyqik wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:51 pm

jimbob wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:26 am

Little waster wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:43 am Presumably the stable genius's next move is to anonymously send the NY Times an email with the attachment "FIS Kompromat File 094 - Russian hotel Watersports recording - Two girls, One Trump.mp4"

Stupid Watergate was so 2020, we're now into Deranged Watergate

See Lin Wood for details, Trump's legal advisor who claims that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court being forced to rape a child at gun point, and that he has the videotapes of this which are also being used to blackmail the Supreme Court.

Which if true* would mean Lin Wood has now admitted to a serious offence and would be facing a lengthy prison sentence himself. Cf Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden's "Laptop from Hell"**.




*try typing that with a striaght face.


**does anyone remember that being a thing? Anyone? Nope.

dyqik wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:51 pm See Lin Wood for details, Trump's legal advisor who claims that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court being forced to rape a child at gun point, and that he has the videotapes of this which are also being used to blackmail the Supreme Court.

I feel very bad for asking this, but can you clarify that sentence? As written it seems to be missing something, and I can't tell if the claim is that the Chief Justice was forced to rape a child or was holding the gun. (Can't really believe I wrote that, but if I was on the Titanic I would be tutting at typos on the lifejacket labels as it went down.)

sTeamTraen wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:22 pm

dyqik wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:51 pm See Lin Wood for details, Trump's legal advisor who claims that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court being forced to rape a child at gun point, and that he has the videotapes of this which are also being used to blackmail the Supreme Court.

I feel very bad for asking this, but can you clarify that sentence? As written it seems to be missing something, and I can't tell if the claim is that the Chief Justice was forced to rape a child or was holding the gun. (Can't really believe I wrote that, but if I was on the Titanic I would be tutting at typos on the lifejacket labels as it went down.)

This may help. Then again, it may not.

Do we think this counts as defamation* or is it too obviously deranged, even in current American political discourse?

*Hard as that is to prove in US courts.

sTeamTraen wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:22 pm

dyqik wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:51 pm See Lin Wood for details, Trump's legal advisor who claims that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court being forced to rape a child at gun point, and that he has the videotapes of this which are also being used to blackmail the Supreme Court.

I feel very bad for asking this, but can you clarify that sentence? As written it seems to be missing something, and I can't tell if the claim is that the Chief Justice was forced to rape a child or was holding the gun. (Can't really believe I wrote that, but if I was on the Titanic I would be tutting at typos on the lifejacket labels as it went down.)

That was my third attempt at writing out what he's claiming.

Fish it's Twitter link "explains".

Fishnut wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:20 pm This may help. Then again, it may not.

Trump still has a small chance of holding on to the Presidency.

If Republicans were to attempt to drag out the January 6th joint session by objecting to individual states’ electoral votes one by one, and thereby triggering the two houses’ separate, hours-long debates on each of them, then it is possible, though unlikely, that the business of counting the votes wouldn’t be concluded in five days, at which point the Electoral Count Act says that the recesses for debating objections to votes must end.
At that point, the electoral votes that have been officially counted for Biden might not yet have reached the threshold of two hundred and seventy votes. At such a juncture, it is possible that some Republicans might attempt a maneuver to abuse the process provided in federal law, by insisting on reverting to the Twelfth Amendment’s provision that, if no candidate has a majority of electoral votes, “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.” This amendment says that, in the House, “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote”—that is, each state casts its vote as a delegation. That could well result in Trump’s reёlection, because there are more Republican than Democratic state delegations in the House, even though Democrats have a majority of representatives there.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-colu ... e-election

The joint session of Congress goes through each state in alphabetical order. If an objection is raised to a state's electors, they separate out again into House and Senate and debate for two hours, then vote.

So in theory they could challenge Alabama's electors, then Alaska's etc.

Assuming two hours debate plus one hour voting, for 50 states +DC, would be 153 hours. So it couldn't be done in five days.

If counting is stopped, it's not clear whether a candidate must reach 270 votes or merely a majority of the votes counted. The New Yorker implies it's the former but I think it's the latter. The scenario would depend on whether Texas gets counted towards the end of the alphabetical list.

Obviously the big flaw in the New Yorker assumption is that House would vote for Trump under the "state casts its vote as a delegation" rule. Yes, there are more Republican states, but plenty of sane Representatives would vote Biden. For example, Texas is Republican 23, Democrat 13. They would need 19 insane Republicans to vote Trump (not sure what happens in a tie) which seems unlikely. In Georgia it is 8-6, Tennessee 7-2. In each state, a relatively small number of sane Republicans would tilt the balance to Biden.

If they fail to count the Electoral College votes it gets to be great fun. Almost worth doing just to see how the complications play out. Like sacrificing your queen in chess, it's likely to be suicidal but it'll be an entertaining ride.

The Vice President gets elected by the Senators, needing 51 votes. Almost certainly the Senate will chose Harris - even Moscow Mitch has acknowledged the Biden-Harris victory, let alone Romney and Co.

This matters, because if the House fails to elect a President, the Vice President takes over until the House chooses someone. (If they also fail to elect a VP, the Speaker of the House i.e. Pelosi becomes President till it's sorted out.) It does not default to Trump remaining President if the House fails to choose - his term ends on 20 January no matter what.

The President gets elected by the House Representatives, each state having one vote as a single delegation, with 26 votes needed to chose the President (DC gets totally ignored despite its 3 EC votes).

A state delegation will in most cases give a majority of its vote to one candidate. If it's a tie then the state is termed "divided" and does not vote for any candidate.

If no candidate gets 26 votes in the first round then it carries on, with further balloting of state delegations. If it's still carrying on by 20 January then the VP becomes acting President, as above. The rounds of ballots in the House would continue, however, and in theory they could finally end up voting for Trump in April or something at which point he'd become President again.

The current scores of House delegations are 27 Republican states, 20 Democrat states and 3 ties. (There is the potential for Covid complications - ill Representatives unable to attend congress or in isolation.)

Assume all Democrats vote for Biden and he has 20 safe states. He needs to win a further 6.

He can get extra states from a single Republican voting against Trump in the tied state delegations:

3 ties

Michigan 7-7
Minnesota 4-4
Pennsylvania 9-9

Or from a Republican defecting from the single member states:

5 Single member Republican delegations

Alaska
Montana
North Dakota
South Dakota
Wyoming

Or from a couple of defectors from reasonably close states, or several in the larger states:

8 reasonably close

Florida 16-11
Georgia 8-6
Iowa 3-1
Kansas 3-1
Mississippi 3-1
North Carolina 8-5
Texas 23-13
Wisconsin 5-3

That then leaves:

14 Secure Republican

Alabama
Arkansas
Idaho
Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Missouri
Nebraska
Ohio
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Tennessee
Utah
West Virginia

20 Democrat

Arizona
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Illinois
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
Oregon
Rhode Island
Vermont
Virginia
Washington

Phew, that adds up to 50 states. My expectation is that the House vote would be sorted immediately with a single round of voting - there are only 140 mad Republicans in the House dedicating themselves to overthrowing Democracy. There will be so many Republicans voting Biden with their state delegations that a 30-20 Biden victory will be fairly straightforward.

Let's try it and see.

Hooray! NYT are running their needles for Georgia tonight. A good chance to trigger 2016 PTSD and remember the Florida needle slamming shut on 3 Nov 2020.

lpm wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 10:00 am The joint session of Congress goes through each state in alphabetical order. If an objection is raised to a state's electors, they separate out again into House and Senate and debate for two hours, then vote.

So in theory they could challenge Alabama's electors, then Alaska's etc.

Assuming two hours debate plus one hour voting, for 50 states +DC, would be 153 hours. So it couldn't be done in five days.

If counting is stopped, it's not clear whether a candidate must reach 270 votes or merely a majority of the votes counted. The New Yorker implies it's the former but I think it's the latter. The scenario would depend on whether Texas gets counted towards the end of the alphabetical list.

Obviously the big flaw in the New Yorker assumption is that House would vote for Trump under the "state casts its vote as a delegation" rule. Yes, there are more Republican states, but plenty of sane Representatives would vote Biden. For example, Texas is Republican 23, Democrat 13. They would need 19 insane Republicans to vote Trump (not sure what happens in a tie) which seems unlikely. In Georgia it is 8-6, Tennessee 7-2. In each state, a relatively small number of sane Republicans would tilt the balance to Biden.

I think there's possibly a technical flaw in that as well - the EC winner is the one who gets the majority of the votes cast, not 270 EVs. After 5 days, there would be a number of EVs accepted as cast, and Biden possibly only needs a majority of those (and so does Trump). The "No overall winner" House and Senate vote system is intended for cases where there are EC votes for more than two candidates.

I think there's an issue with your analysis - there's no need for an hour for voting for each state (the ECA doesn't prescribe voting methods and so the House can adopt voting rules as it sees fit), and voting could be done on voice vote in a few minutes.

But there's a glaring issue I can see with that NYTimes quote above, which is that I don't think that the ECA limits the counting to 5 days - it just bars recesses in the joint session after 5 days. But the houses withdrawing to debate and vote isn't a recess - the joint session continues while they are withdrawn.

Such joint meeting shall not be dissolved until the count of electoral votes shall be completed and the result declared; and no recess shall be taken unless a question shall have arisen in regard to counting any such votes, or otherwise under this subchapter, in which case it shall be competent for either House, acting separately, in the manner hereinbefore provided, to direct a recess of such House not beyond the next calendar day, Sunday excepted, at the hour of 10 o’clock in the forenoon. But if the counting of the electoral votes and the declaration of the result shall not have been completed before the fifth calendar day next after such first meeting of the two Houses, no further or other recess shall be taken by either House.

New Yorker, not NYTimes article.

In particular, section 15, which lays out the procedure for withdrawing and debating, doesn't use the word "recess", while section 16 specifies that recesses can't be beyond 10am the next morning (Sundays excluded), which doesn't match up to the two hour time limit on debate at all. So it can't be that the withdrawing to debate and vote on disputed votes is a recess, and thus there's no limit on the time for debating and voting.

dyqik wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 2:18 pm I think there's possibly a technical flaw in that as well - the EC winner is the one who gets the majority of the votes cast, not 270 EVs.

Yes, as I said this is what I think, but the New Yorker thing implied the opposite.

I said above that it would matter whether they'd get to Texas in time. This is wrong.

Because it's done alphabetically, tomorrow Trump takes an immediate lead from Alabama and Alaska, holds it through Arizona and Arkansas, when he's up 18-11. Then he gets hit by California's 55.

Biden remains in the alphabetical lead ever after.

Trump gets a nice run through South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah but only enough to haul it back to Biden ahead 265-224. Vermont's 3 and then Virginia's 13 votes takes Biden over 270. (I don't know when DC's 3 get counted, I put them after Washington State).

I think there's an issue with your analysis - there's no need for an hour for voting for each state (the ECA doesn't prescribe voting methods and so the House can adopt voting rules as it sees fit), and voting could be done on voice vote in a few minutes.

But the Senators have to shuffle too and from the House chamber as well. I think an hour is generous.

I guess we'll see how long it takes tomorrow/Thursday - presumably there will be 6 disputed states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin). Starts at 1pm local time Weds, won't finish till Thursday or maybe Friday.

But there's a glaring issue I can see with that NYTimes quote above, which is that I don't think that the ECA limits the counting to 5 days - it just bars recesses in the joint session after 5 days. But the houses withdrawing to debate and vote isn't a recess - the joint session continues while they are withdrawn.

Looks like you're right. They'd have to stay up past their bedtimes.