the US Constitution allows for the state legislature to pick the method to determine the electors BUT the Constitution also sets the dates so there's no time for a runoff prior to certifying and selecting electors

but they can have their Sen runoff in Jan and still have Sen ready to be sworn in for the next Congress

okay it's federal election law as voted by US Congress for the dates as per the Constitution to be very picky but you get idea

okay back to the GA Sen race ... there's like 86k vote advantage for the Rep with 114k voting for the Libertarian candidate ... Dem candidate would have to take 3 out of 4 of every Libertarian voter just to even to total ... my belief is that a Libertarian voter will want gridlock in DC if they can't have their candidate and will break heavy Rep also there's at least 46k that voted in Pres race that didn't vote for Rep Sen but are all of those going to come out for the Sen race AND vote Dem?

and all the Rep have to do is get ONE GA Sen seat to ensure 51 seat majority ... Dems have to get BOTH to get a 50/50 tie with VP Harris being the tie-breaker

and then there is Manchin from West "by God" Virginia ... an old-time Democrat that ain't for "crazy socialist agenda" <insert AOC stare here>

you mean like what they had in France and Italy

of course, then there's Sweden that never had a lockdown, but then what do they know

> This whole thing could have been avoided with ranked choice
@DrSammyD I'm fine with it but neither of the two parties are because the rise of 3rd party in such a system could be very swift

@DrSammyD as though we expected anything less from him

if you want levity, try this: https://youtu.be/Cdd8QRi_OvI

> You get enough of those and bye bye republic
@DrSammyD it's already "baked into the cake" ... can you say "currency collapse?"

https://www.ajc.com/politics/election/georgia-recount-metro-atlanta-counties-offer-live-feeds-for-voters-to-watch/6MCEZ5N4JJGKTEC4IU7ELDOIRQ/

"I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud which I haven't heard of anything-I don't see us in any serious way addressing a change in electors," https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/14/ploy-flip-electors-trump-rejected-republican-leaders-4-key-states/6298966002/

> Just an update on the status of the Shiva theory. https://youtu.be/aokNwKx7gM8
@DrSammyD yeah his analysis (or his recreation of Shiva's analysis) is a little different than I thought. I thought it was top of ticket divided by downline voting on a per party basis and I think that's what you were plotting. MI is somewhat unique because it allows for straight line party voting and I think many states have done away with that. I defer to his analysis since he recreated Shiva's results. Now it does bring up some interesting questions about what went on in GA. That one Rep Sen got nearly an identical vote count as Trump, but the Dem candidate was nearly 100k down from Biden. Part of it was that the Libertarian candidate for Sen had almost twice the total as the Libertarian candidate for Pres. The other part of was that top of the ticket voters outnumbered downline in this case by some ~40k.

Again my interest in the GA Sen is more as to who is likely to win the runoff.

> Is that story being reported in other news ? Does anyone know more about the fraud case in Houston?
@mtpockets59 take a look at this: https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/10/05/texas-early-voting-petition/

> Meglide sorry i doubt snopes as a reliable source. Since it gives opinions mixed with facts. Since this guy was arrested does not mean he is guilty but for snopes to say little evidence when that evidence has not been presented.
@mtpockets59 not saying Snopes is the be all, end all source BUT it does offer more context such as links to the original court petition: http://www.search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=4b1d89c5-4aac-4a88-a1a2-6ea4cfb43ba6&coa=cossup&DT=BRIEFS&MediaID=bd161d21-f25f-4546-8437-78e1dc627256

also note that the headline says "arrested" content of article says "accused"

> get straight to the 'China' terminus
@Zuluzeit good luck with that, I keep waiting for one of these lawsuits to tell us something, to come up with some real evidence and so far we're still waiting

thanks for that link to the National Review article ... good summary.

I listened to the YouTube livestream on my drive home from work tonight. It was perfectly understandable without the visuals.

Also from National Review is this: "On Thursday, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell said at a press conference that Dominion voting machines “can say that a Biden vote counts as 1.25, and a Trump vote counts as 0.75 and those may be the numbers that were actually used here. It’s not just the swing states that were affected. The algorithm was likely run across the country to affect the entire election.”
One reason why we know with certainty that these claims are false is that the state of Georgia just conducted a hand recount of all the paper ballots in the entire state. That is, with bipartisan observers, human beings looked at each paper ballot and tallied them all up. If there were problems with vote-counting machines, Georgia’s hand recount would have found them." https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/how-we-know-dominion-voting-machines-didnt-affect-the-election-outcome/

Like I said that hand recount in GA will tell us something and it pretty much laid to rest the claim that all those Dominion vote counting systems were rigged.

The main point about the GA hand count is that the idea that the computer was programmed to unequally weight Biden votes versus Trump votes is false at least with regards to GA computers (Dominion systems)

all shell, no bomb ... doesn't matter which numbers you use, same outcome

I watched the video and here are my thoughts: this was aired on Nov 5th some 2 weeks ago, so there's been plenty of time for the lawyers to get what underlying evidence exists in front of the courts, the claims here are extraordinary and the video seems convincing but you can do that in a video when there is no opposing side represented, evidence in a court of law is different story and this is my sticking point ... lots of extraordinary accusations of widespread voter/election fraud but the evidence filed in court documents, so far, don't add up to huge buckets of ballots ... now a good portion of the allegations here and with Powell revolve around the notion that the computer software can reallocate votes for one candidate to another BUT they hand counted the paper ballots in GA and found not huge discrepancy so IF there was fraud it NOT in the software alone there had to be swap or additions to the paper ballots themselves which in turn would involve a lot more actual people than would a software only fraud ... what is that they say? you can only keep a secret if out of the two people that know it, at least one of them is dead

"One might expect that when
seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with
compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this
Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief
despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.
That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained
legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative
complaint and unsupported by evidence." https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057.202.0_1.pdf

somebody has been smoking the Kraken 🙄

we can: https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-recount-shows-verdict-of-the-people-says-elections-head/7ARKVPQM3VAXJOEFZYQTV477II/

Biden received 12,670 more votes than Trump, according to the certified vote total of machine counts. The recount found a similar result, with Biden ahead by 12,284 votes.

"Conservatism has simply become progressivism driving the speed limit, and that's a road I'd prefer to never travel down." ... I like that line.

"Hopefully this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical."

"It's a massive project to pull this fraud claim together with the evidence that I want to put in," she added.

"You name the manner of fraud and it occurred in Georgia."

Among the most explosive claims alluded to by Powell were:


Joe Biden votes being "weighted" at 1.25 times and President Donald Trump votes being parsed at 3/4.
Algorithms that gave Democrats 35,000 extra votes. https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/sidney-powell-campaign-lawyer-dominion/2020/11/21/id/998181/

now this is going to be very difficult to prove considering the hand recount in GA

https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-recount-shows-verdict-of-the-people-says-elections-head/7ARKVPQM3VAXJOEFZYQTV477II/

Biden received 12,670 more votes than Trump, according to the certified vote total of machine counts. The recount found a similar result, with Biden ahead by 12,284 votes.

By the time they are done in GA the votes will have been counted 3 times (once by hand, twice by machine)

two of those counts are already done

once machine count and one hand count and the difference is a few hundred votes

the claim is that there's an algorithm in the computer that adds 1.25 when it sees a Biden vote and 0.75 when it sees a Trump vote and that over a large count of votes it skews the vote to Biden ... BUT in GA they did a hand count where a representative from each party looks at each ballot, agree who the vote goes for and adds up the number for each candidate

well they're going to do a third count (machine) because the law allows for a candidate to request a recount if the difference is less than 0.5 percent

pretty much what the PA judge said in his ruling

in GA there is a paper ballot for ever vote so you hand count where the count is one-to-one and if that matches the machine count then there can't be some hidden algorithm in the machine that is different from one-to-one

I was referring the accusation that the machine weighted the votes differently

When pressed by Fox News’ Eric Shawn on how he could be sure Dominion’s machines were secure, Steel said that when voters casts their ballot, they fill it out on a touchscreen and are then given a printed copy that they hand to a local election official for safekeeping.

“If any electronic interference had taken place, the tally reported electronically would not match the printed ballots,” Steel said. “And in every case where we’ve looked at in Georgia, all across the country, the printed ballots, the gold standard in election security, has matched the electronic tally.” https://nypost.com/2020/11/22/not-physically-possible-for-dominion-machines-to-flip-votes-rep/

know how you feel my candidate didn't even come in second

interviewed by Fox News no less

"President Trump's campaign said in a Sunday statement that Sidney Powell is neither a member of its legal team nor a lawyer for Trump in his personal capacity." https://www.axios.com/sidney-powell-trump-campaign-lawyer-b37fc70d-9935-4ffd-a810-0d01ae909584.html

my understanding is that at one point GA didn't have paper ballots for votes cast on election day via the machine and they upgraded their whole system such that there was a paper trail, that the voters themselves could see, and that could be counted by hand to rule out any fraud by the machines

in the end it will show that our system is strong ... will only reflect badly on Trump if there is no evidence of fraud

I disagree, at least in terms of the election, damage to the country will come from another source, one in which none of the politicians will be wiling to deal with until it's too late

I'm confused. Are you saying there are ballots on this plane? What does this have to do with the election? You lost me here.

oh ... I stopped thinking about the Dominion thing once I saw the hand count in GA come out exactly the same as the machine count

just do a little research about what they did in GA in terms of ensuring every ballot had a paper trail associated with it

yeah if that GA hand recount had come up significantly different that certainly would have been the "smoking gun"

@Repeat here's that video https://youtu.be/YYJUjkpjZbo

okay just focusing on the election ... what's so different about this one? the volume of mail-in ballots ... normally the winner is called before they even open and count the mail-in or absentee ballots but in this case because of Covid, lots and lots of folks didn't want to go to the polls, stand in line, etc. ... so that is the point of possible contention and to be honest there were some issues, for example in my state (where the Democrats control everything) they wanted to mail out actual ballots but the secretary of state (also a Democrat) and said that wasn't allowed under the law, so they mailed out to every registered voter an application for an absentee ballot that you could return with signature, proof of ID, etc and request an absentee ballot, further they allowed for the ballot to be mailed back in which case they looked for a postmark or you could drop in a designated drop box, in which case you had to do it yourself or have a family member do it, signature on inside of the voter, signature and relation to voter on outside ... now there are a few states like Washington that mail out the ballots to the entire list of registered voters BUT I think all the states under current consideration required the voter to initiate the process and request the ballot and then and only then was the ballot sent out ... why is this important? because a blanket mass mailing of ballots out to all registered voters in states that normally don't do that would have put a lot of ballots out in the wild for people to vote multiple times with ... but as far as I can tell that did not happen in the states that are now being contested

well to get very specific ... Trump was concerned about a mass, unrequested mailing out of ballots to the entire voter registration roll, he was even specific in his tweets that the normal process of requesting an absentee ballot and getting one mailed out to you was fine (he had to, of course, acknowledge that the way most of our military votes this way) ... and in the states now being contested there was no mass mailing out of ballots, I think they considered it in a couple of state (PA and MI?) but didn't do it

so at this point, if the Trump campaign is going to win in court it's going to need to show that there were loads of illegal ballots inserted into multiple states that put the count over for Biden and yet didn't form a "blue wave" ... my issue is suppose this is true that they (whoever they is) had this grand plan to insert ballots in multiple states to throw the election to Biden, why not also mark the ballots for the Democratic candidates downline? in fact if you examine the number you'll find that if true that they had to mark for the Republican candidate downline in some cases ... huh?

Trump said if he lost it would only be because the election was stolen ... think Biden said something similar?

suppose it was true that the Army confiscated servers in Germany ... these would be on military plane for which there would be no records on the open internet for you to search ... just saying

speaking of which "They did not vote absentee because they were told by the president don't go to absentee, it's not secure," Raffensperger said. "But then they did not come out and vote in person."
"He would have won by 10,000 votes," Raffensperger said. "He actually depressed, suppressed his own voting base." https://www.newsweek.com/georgia-secretary-state-says-trump-discouraged-24k-gop-primary-voters-voting-november-he-would-1548203

yeah so I was referring to inserting supposed extra mail-in ballots for Biden, something like where folks are adding these to the real mail-in ballots and counting them in the night, etc. to go along with the rumors, etc. ... do I think this happened, absolutely not but I mean if someone could come with evidence then fine but if that evidence existed you would think it would have been before a court by now

right which is why I don't think that happened ... and thus why Trump's lawyers have so far failed to produce any compelling evidence in court or even begin to claim massive election fraud in court

yeah if you scroll up thru the thread that's what I said ... the hand recount of the paper ballots addresses the issue of the computer supposedly weighting ballots for one candidate over another ... so what you're left with IF you want to propose the election was stolen is tens of thousands of inserted fake ballots ... and that too seems unlikely but I'm willing as would a court look at evidence of that, if it existed

yes and then they went to all that trouble and didn't also rig it so they won the Senate?

I mean in GA alone they had to have inserted ballots that voted top of ticket Biden and downline Republican?

oh, I get and then Trump's team tries to uncover it and they get throw off by the disinformation on the machine voting and they look stupid and the election is stolen ... 5-D chess

or 5-G chess

and probably a lot of beer

yeah but when I scroll thru it and look at what was discussed overnight it's the same ole topics that have been discussed many times before

the problem is at this point those signatures are separated from the ballots, so what are they going to ask the court to do? toss out ALL the mail-in ballots? maybe those ballots are now mixed in with the in person ballots, so toss out everything based on a small number of unmatched signatures? and this has to be large number of signatures for MI and PA, 100k plus and they have to get court wins for this in at least three states I believe ... don't see this happening

kicked out of which places for how long ... one precinct worth of votes is not enough to change anything

at least this hasn't been proven in court ... I think there was some case where they claimed their observers weren't there but I think court's response was that they had to show observers had tried to do their job and weren't allowed to do so ... the counting of votes must let observers in but they don't have to wait for the observers to show up

there have been some court wins where the distance the observers had to stand away from the voter counters was changed from 25 feet to 6 feet

and so far the cases have been very weak

one case, one state is not going to change anything ... going to take multiple cases, multiple states

"Most Republicans in Congress have been reluctant to suggest that President Trump concede the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. They argue that it's best to let Trump expend his legal options before they apply too much pressure.

That pressure has been building and it could be about to go bust this week, with key states certifying the vote totals and making their results official.

Michigan and Pennsylvania are set to do so Monday, and Nevada will on Tuesday. Arizona and Wisconsin have certification deadlines next week.

Biden is ahead by more than 155,000 votes in Michigan, by more than 81,000 in Pennsylvania and by more than 33,000 in Nevada." https://www.npr.org/2020/11/23/937802054/trump-is-running-out-of-time-as-key-states-set-to-certify-that-biden-won

hammer may drop today ... after these states certify their results it will put up or shut up time for the Trump legal team

their appeal in the PA case is already underwhelming https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/22/trump-campaign-files-narrow-appeal-in-pennsylvania-439500

I guess I should say it's already been put up or shut up time and they haven't been putting up compelling evidence in court and they haven't been shutting up about wild allegations of massive coordinated fraud in public ... pretty sure that's all coming to an end early this week ... the rebuke of Powell was the start of the exit strategy

Chris Christie's comments yesterday were also a sign that this is coming to an end very soon

and even those observers in Wisconsin are not getting kicked out

so what ... the observers are close enough to see what's going on ... ideally for reducing Covid transmission each pair would be from the same household

probably just due to the poll workers being supplied masks and the observers having to supply their own ... it's just one photo

I'm taking a more optimistic view on it until proven otherwise ... the blue wave didn't happen, the Dems actually lost seats in the House and it appears the Reps will keep control of the Senate ... I'm hopeful that will allow the country to just calm down because a more moderate tone and more moderate agenda will be the order of the day

then there is this: https://www.newsweek.com/georgia-trump-supporters-destroy-gop-boycott-senate-runoffs-1549245

so if Trump loses, let's give up the Senate also? can't see how this helps your cause

Need to start #covid channel

"Trump administration GSA Emily Murphy grants permission to begin the transition process to President-elect Joe Biden" https://twitter.com/i/events/1331014582899339264?s=09

Would also recommend starting a #socialmedia channel

so my recommendation for #covid channel is to discuss the legal aspects of the various government responses to the pandemic ... my recommendation for #socialmedia is to discuss legal aspect of social media companies, in particular these companies avoid lability for content on their platforms because they claimed they didn't content BUT here lately they have been editing content so why shouldn't they be treated like traditional newspapers now

if you have to ask, you can't afford him 😉

well if taxation implies representation then logically no representation implies no taxation BUT no taxation does not necessarily imply no representation ... maybe I should move to Puerto Rico like Peter Schiff?

govt IS bankrupt now: https://www.usdebtclock.org/

if that means we've been playing with Monopoly money, then I agree https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm

yes but I'm an old guy and in Monopoly it says in the rules if the banker runs out of money he or she just needs to print more

a fiat currency is fiat precisely to break the connection between currency and production, that is its purpose

well the problem arises when the maker of the fiat currency floods the market with new, freshly created (out of thin air) currency and thus devaluing the currency and artificially increasing the cost of production either through increase asset prices or increased commodity prices or both

precisely the problem as a species we've out-paced evolution (temporarily) and brought along too many idiots (who wouldn't otherwise survive in the wild), maybe with global warming we'll scorch the earth and send us all back to the caveman days