Kansas Crimson

japhy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 10:45 am This seems pretty straight forward.

An expert hired by Donald Trump to substantiate the former president’s voter fraud claims regarding the 2020 presidential election called him out for continuing to peddle falsehoods. Trump in November of 2020, shortly after losing the election, entered into a contract with Ken Block of Simpatico Software Systems, according to The Washington Post. However, Block on Tuesday penned an op-ed for USA Today asserting that his research never yielded anything to support Trump’s claims — and instead wholly debunked them.

“I am the expert who was hired by the Trump campaign,” Block wrote. “The findings of my company’s in-depth analysis are detailed in the depositions taken by the Selection Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The transcripts show that the campaign found no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of any election. That message was communicated directly to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.” He then underscored the “steady diet of lies and innuendo” that the ex-president has used in an effort to “overcome the truth,” before noting that the "cries that the election was lost or stolen due to voter fraud continue with no sign of stopping.”

"The constant drumbeat hardens people’s hearts and minds to the truth about the 2020 election. Emails and documents show that the voter data available to the campaign contained no evidence of large-scale voter fraud based on data mining and fraud analytics," he wrote. "More important, claims of voter fraud made by others were verified as false, including proof of why those claims were disproven." Block also noted that his investigation’s findings have been shared with special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, both of whom have criminally charged Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. “What these claims don’t take into account is that voter fraud is detectable, quantifiable and verifiable. I have yet to see anyone offer up 'evidence' of voter fraud from the 2020 election that provides these three things,” Block continued. "My company’s contract with the campaign obligated us to deliver evidence of voter fraud that could be defended in a court of law. The small amount of voter fraud I found was bipartisan, with about as many Republicans casting duplicate votes as Democrats.”

And yet here we are with millions of Rubepublican voters and politicians worshiping a well known con man.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 12:36 pm

japhy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 10:45 am This seems pretty straight forward.

An expert hired by Donald Trump to substantiate the former president’s voter fraud claims regarding the 2020 presidential election called him out for continuing to peddle falsehoods. Trump in November of 2020, shortly after losing the election, entered into a contract with Ken Block of Simpatico Software Systems, according to The Washington Post. However, Block on Tuesday penned an op-ed for USA Today asserting that his research never yielded anything to support Trump’s claims — and instead wholly debunked them.

“I am the expert who was hired by the Trump campaign,” Block wrote. “The findings of my company’s in-depth analysis are detailed in the depositions taken by the Selection Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The transcripts show that the campaign found no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of any election. That message was communicated directly to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.” He then underscored the “steady diet of lies and innuendo” that the ex-president has used in an effort to “overcome the truth,” before noting that the "cries that the election was lost or stolen due to voter fraud continue with no sign of stopping.”

"The constant drumbeat hardens people’s hearts and minds to the truth about the 2020 election. Emails and documents show that the voter data available to the campaign contained no evidence of large-scale voter fraud based on data mining and fraud analytics," he wrote. "More important, claims of voter fraud made by others were verified as false, including proof of why those claims were disproven." Block also noted that his investigation’s findings have been shared with special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, both of whom have criminally charged Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. “What these claims don’t take into account is that voter fraud is detectable, quantifiable and verifiable. I have yet to see anyone offer up 'evidence' of voter fraud from the 2020 election that provides these three things,” Block continued. "My company’s contract with the campaign obligated us to deliver evidence of voter fraud that could be defended in a court of law. The small amount of voter fraud I found was bipartisan, with about as many Republicans casting duplicate votes as Democrats.”

And yet here we are with millions of Rubepublican voters and politicians worshiping a well known con man.

Adherents to schools of Constitutional interpretation typically adopted by the right - originalism or textualism, say - will often call the drafters geniuses, savants.

People of prescience and forethought. People who built systems that would produce the proper output even when the specific inputs were beyond possible anticipation.

I would say that the disqualification clause, which was adopted at the end of the Civil War, sure does seem to have been drafted precisely to address the sort of moment you identify.

Twenty-five percent of Americans say it is “probably” or “definitely” true that the FBI instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a false concept promoted by right-wing media and repeatedly denied by federal law enforcement, according to a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

The Post-UMD poll finds a smaller 11 percent of the public overall thinks there is “solid evidence” that FBI operatives organized and encouraged the attack, while 13 percent say this is their “suspicion only.”

Among Republicans, 34 percent say the FBI organized and encouraged the insurrection, compared with 30 percent of independents and 13 percent of Democrats.

The results confirm that misinformation about Jan. 6 is widespread as the United States heads into a presidential election year, during a campaign in which the former president and leading 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed support for those who participated in the insurrection. Despite a detailed congressional investigation and more than 725 completed federal prosecutions of Jan. 6 participants that did not yield evidence of FBI involvement, a substantial minority of Americans still embrace conspiracy theories not unlike the ones that drove many rioters to storm the Capitol three years ago.

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 10:14 am makes you ponder just how non-good old uncle is. when half the country would rather not have him back for a second term. all your things considered.

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 10:14 am makes you ponder just how non-good old uncle is. when half the country would rather not have him back for a second term. all your things considered.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 9:59 am It's not often I get angry at the news anymore.

A quarter of Americans believe FBI instigated Jan. 6, Post-UMD poll finds

More than 3 in 10 Republicans have adopted the falsehood that the FBI conspired to cause the Capitol riot

Twenty-five percent of Americans say it is “probably” or “definitely” true that the FBI instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a false concept promoted by right-wing media and repeatedly denied by federal law enforcement, according to a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

The Post-UMD poll finds a smaller 11 percent of the public overall thinks there is “solid evidence” that FBI operatives organized and encouraged the attack, while 13 percent say this is their “suspicion only.”

Among Republicans, 34 percent say the FBI organized and encouraged the insurrection, compared with 30 percent of independents and 13 percent of Democrats.

The results confirm that misinformation about Jan. 6 is widespread as the United States heads into a presidential election year, during a campaign in which the former president and leading 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed support for those who participated in the insurrection. Despite a detailed congressional investigation and more than 725 completed federal prosecutions of Jan. 6 participants that did not yield evidence of FBI involvement, a substantial minority of Americans still embrace conspiracy theories not unlike the ones that drove many rioters to storm the Capitol three years ago.

If you take part in laundering, validating or amplifying right-wing misinformation - regardless of whether pertaining to this topic or others - you bear a piece of the responsibility for this.

A solid 1/3 of the country cannot parse fact from fiction.

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 10:54 am it means you are only listening to "news" that is only "reporting" what you want to hear.

"journalists" are supposed to be impartial.

me being a cagey veteran. and an adult. i take it all in. process. make up my own mind for myself. it's called being an adult.

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 10:54 am it means you are only listening to "news" that is only "reporting" what you want to hear.

"journalists" are supposed to be impartial.

me being a cagey veteran. and an adult. i take it all in. process. make up my own mind for myself. it's called being an adult.

Q: Do you think it is true or false that FBI operatives organized and encouraged the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021?

__ Definitely/probably true
__ Not sure
__ No opinion
__ Probably/definitely false

DCHawk1 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 11:54 am Once again, the problem with the world is that more people aren't twocoach.

twocoach wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 12:55 pm

DCHawk1 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 11:54 am Once again, the problem with the world is that more people aren't twocoach.

I think there are large number of "news sites" that MICH has claimed are legit that both Democrat voting and Republican voting users here have agreed are trash.

seahawk wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 12:24 pm Good news for Republicans--a school shooting occurred in the state where they're campaigning so they don't have to gather people together to talk about "thoughts and prayers," they can do that at their regularly scheduled campaign event.

https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/sta ... 15070?s=20

The Iowa results pretty much told us what we already knew. Trump remains the dominant leader of the hard-right older Republicans who turn out for caucuses, but is so generally unpopular that 49% of Iowa caucusgoers—the party’s most dedicated supporters in a deeply Republican state—chose someone else. The Trump base is older—entry polls showed that only 27% of yesterday’s voters were under the age of 50—and Trump won most handily in the rural, white counties that look least like the rest of the country. His greatest increase in support since 2016 came among white evangelicals.

That support from those who claim fervent religious beliefs seems an odd fit with the candidate, who was in a federal courtroom in New York City today for the start of a trial to determine the additional damages he owes writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she said he raped her in the 1990s, claiming she was lying to sell books. Carroll sued him in 2019, but the case has been delayed as Trump argued that he had presidential immunity for his comments.

[...]

White evangelicals heartily endorse a crook and a rapist apparently because they expect that he will put in place the world they envision, one controlled by white, patriarchal evangelical Christians.

But as even the Iowa caucuses indicated, the idea of replacing American democracy with an authoritarian who will enact Christian nationalism is not generally popular. In the Washington Post on January 11, Philip Bump explored a new poll by YouGov showing that when U.S. adult citizens are presented with 30 of Trump’s declared policies, majorities oppose 22 of them. A majority approved only four of them, and those were the ones the right wing has been hammering: banning hormonal or surgical treatment for transgender minors (57%), legally limiting recognized genders (53%), requiring immigrants to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims are being processed (56%), and—by a narrow majority of 51%—deporting immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Some of Trump’s signature policies are deeply unpopular. Only 21% of Americans support getting rid of the nonpartisan civil service; only 18% support giving the president control over regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission. Only 31% support sending U.S. troops into U.S. cities to enforce order; only 33% support sending troops into Mexico to fight drug cartels. Only 23% support further cuts to taxes on corporations. Only 29% want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (which has seen a record 20.5 million Americans enroll so far in the current enrollment period); only 28% support withdrawing from the World Health Organization. Only 38% want to end birthright citizenship, the same percentage as those who want to end U.S. aid to Ukraine.

The YouGov study shows that only 30% of Americans support withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, and a December 2023 CNN poll showed that 73% want the government to do more to address climate change. And yet, today, Scott Waldman of Politico previewed the Trump team’s preparation for ending all efforts to address climate change. Complaining that the people in Trump’s first administration were “weak,” Trump advisor Steve Milloy told Waldman that “The approach is to go back to all-out fossil fuel production and sit on the EPA.”

“We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshaling our forces,” Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, said last year. “Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power Day 1 and deconstruct the administrative state.”

Republicans are clearly hoping to use the issue of immigration against President Joe Biden and the Democrats in the upcoming election. After insisting in November that immigration was in such a crisis that there could be no more aid to Ukraine, Israel, or Taiwan without it, Republicans in December rejected the idea of new legislation and said Biden must handle the issue himself. Then, in early January, 64 Republicans traveled to the border to demonstrate the importance of the issue.

But now that the Senate appears to have hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform measure, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said this morning: “It’s a complex issue. I don’t think now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform, because we know how complicated that is.” After a meeting at the White House today with President Biden, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, and committee heads, Johnson still refused to put the proposed deal up for a vote in the House.

In today’s meeting, Biden emphasized the danger of leaving Ukraine’s defense unfunded. “He was clear,” the White House said, “Congress’s continued failure to act endangers the United States’ national security, the NATO Alliance, and the rest of the free world.”

Johnson is caught between U.S. national security and Trump. On the Fox News Channel tonight, Laura Ingraham told Johnson she had just gotten off a phone call with Trump and Trump had told her that he was against the immigration deal and had urged Johnson to oppose it. “He…was extremely adamant about it,” she said. Johnson agreed and said that he and Trump had been “talking about this pretty frequently.”

Trump needs the issue of immigration to whip up his base for the 2024 election.

Today the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by James Comer (R-KY) held a hearing titled “The Biden Administration’s Regulatory and Policymaking Efforts to Undermine U.S. Immigration Law.” The administration has asked for additional funding for border patrol officers, immigration courts, and so on, but Comer said in his opening statement that the problem is not a lack of resources but rather an unwillingness to enforce the law.

Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) replied: “You know we have failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform up here for decades.” He noted that one of his colleagues had provided statistics showing that President Barack Obama deported more people in each term than Trump did, so “if the border wasn’t a problem until President Biden was elected, then how are we deporting all of these people in administrations before Trump was elected? It’s because this situation has been going on for decades. So stop lying to the American people that none of this happened until President Biden was elected.”

Comer has also used the House Oversight Committee to spread the idea that President Biden is corrupt, but while he has made many allegations on right-wing media channels, the committee has not, in fact, turned up any evidence linking the president to illegal activity. Instead, the investigations there appear to be a continuation of the technique Republicans have used since the 1990s to insinuate that a Democrat has engaged in wrongdoing simply by holding investigations.

Trump employed this technique effectively in 2016 in his constant refrain that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, had illegally deleted emails, and less effectively in 2019 when he tried to strong-arm Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Hunter Biden. It was central to the plan of convincing state legislatures that they could recast their 2020 electoral votes: lawyer Jeffrey Clark wanted to tell them (falsely) that there were voting irregularities that the Department of Justice was investigating.

But this technique has backfired so far in this Congress. After a year of hearing that Biden is corrupt, MAGA Republicans have expected to see him impeached. But Democrats have come to hearings exceedingly well prepared and have pushed back on MAGA talking points, turning the tables on the Republicans so thoroughly that Comer recently was forced to back down, saying, “My job was never to impeach.”

Creating a false reality to trick voters is central to undermining democracy, and it is no secret that autocratic states like Russia, Iran, and China are spreading disinformation in the U.S. But I have always wondered what would happen when the American people finally pushed back against suggestions and innuendo and instead demanded actual evidence and policies designed to address problems, as they did before American politics turned into entertainment.

Sparko wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 8:09 pm Republicans are worthless.