A Tweet Too Far ?

[TheVat]

The competition was fierce, but after dozens of meritless post-election lawsuits cycled in and out of U.S. courts since Nov. 3, Twitter Law appears to have found a winner.

“Folks, this is the single dumbest election lawsuit of the entire cycle, and I’ve read kraken filings front to back,” wrote New York-based commercial litigator Akiva Cohen, announcing that the reigning conspiracy theorists of the “elite, strike force” legal team have been dethroned...

https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/l ... ire-cycle/


Filed in federal court in the District of Columbia Tuesday evening, the complaint rehashes a slew of already debunked conspiracy theories regarding “election irregularities and improprieties” and seeks to require state legislatures to approve the certification of election results in every state.

And whereas outgoing Vice President Mike Pence has appeared as a plaintiff in multiple lawsuits, he appears in this complaint as a defendant that the coalition wants to compel to topple the 2020 election results by court fiat.

“[U]nder Article II, Defendants Vice President Pence, the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate can only open up and count Presidential elector ballots if the state legislature has affirmatively voted to certify the Presidential electors; otherwise, the votes of the Presidential electors cannot be counted,” the suit erroneously claims. “The Plaintiffs claim that the Vice President and U.S. Congress act unconstitutionally in this election and future elections when they count votes of Presidential electors where the respective state legislature has not affirmatively voted in favor of post-election certification”

According to The Detroit News, two Republican state lawmakers included as plaintiffs in the suit, Reps. Matt Maddock and Daire Rendon, were “working to remove their names” from the complaint within hours of its filing.

While they had given Kaardal permission to use their names, the lawmakers told the news outlet that “what was eventually filed is very different than what was initially discussed.”

The suit names 19 defendants, including both chambers of Congress and “the Electoral College.” The latter caused quite a stir amid the legal community.

“They’re going to try to serve process on the Electoral College. I am deceased,” Reuters legal journalist Brad Heath said.

“I know that might sound surprising given how much time we’ve spent talking about the Electoral College, but that’s the literal truth. The Electoral College isn’t actually a thing that exists. It’s a process. This is like being hit by a hurricane and trying to sue ‘the wind,’” Mike Dunford wrote on Twitter.

[toucana]

I saved at least 8 Republican Senators, including Mitch, from losing in the last Rigged (for President) Election. Now they (almost all) sit back and watch me fight against a crooked and vicious foe, the Radical Left Democrats. I will NEVER FORGET!

! This claim about election fraud is disputed

11:06 PM · Dec 24, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1342245390540804096

"the last Rigged (for President) Election" ? - Uh-huh !

[toucana]

Members of the Arizona Republican party have Tweeted out this picture of their hero president Trump re-imagined as Benedict Arnold !

Benedict Arnold was not only the most notorious traitor in American history, a senior General in charge of West Point who changed sides and led British forces against his former comrades, but as Grant Stern pointed out on Twitter:

@grantstern
How ironic that Donald Trump's supporters dressed him up just like the man whose name is synonymous with being a traitor, Benedict Arnold.

Did you know that he lost thousands of Revolutionary War soldiers to a smallpox plague because he refused to perform inoculations?

Arnold along with Benjamin Franklin was one of the prominent sceptics who opposed the inoculation of the Continental regulars against Variola (smallpox), even though up to 90% of their casualties had been caused by disease, and Variola the smallpox virus was the most vicious of them all

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/GW&smallpoxinoculation.html

FFI see --> Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 - Nathaniel Hupert 2002

https://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/fulltext/2002/12000/pox_americana__the_great_smallpox_epidemic_of.37.aspx

[toucana]

Ivanka apparently had second thoughts about the wisdom of referring to a lynch mob storming the Capitol as 'American Patriots' and quickly deleted this tweet.

[TheVat]

She didn't have second thoughts*, but her legions of followers reacted negatively to her tweet, taking issue with the label of "patriots" being applied to a mob of hooligans bent on trashing the Constitution and the rule of law, which prompted her to withdraw her tweet.


* it's debatable as to whether or not she has first thoughts.

[toucana]

https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-permanently-suspended-from-twitter-over-risk-of-further-incitement-of-violence-12182928

For good this time.

[Serpent]

Take your time closing the barn door; that horse has bolted. No, wait! It's been stolen!

[TheVat]

This never-dull thread started, by Toucana, in June 2017. Is this the end, or should we continue to gaze upon the drolleries, outrages, atrocities, and ever-surfacing Krakens of other platforms, and the myriad grotesque incarnations of Trumpism therein?

[toucana]

Trump tried side-tweeting on the official POTUS account instead.

https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-permanently-suspended-from-twitter-over-risk-of-further-incitement-of-violence-12182928

Twitter deleted that effort within a minute, although not before screenshots were taken (see above).

The POTUS Twitter account which was due to have all existing subscriptions deleted on 20th January has now been locked down too it seems.

[charon]

What does 'permanently suspended' mean? Suspended means held in suspension, therefore not dead. Permanent means it's deleted and ceases to exist.

Which is it? They ought to be clear.

[toucana]

Permanent suspension: This is our most severe enforcement action. Permanently suspending an account will remove it from global view, and the violator will not be allowed to create new accounts. When we permanently suspend an account, we notify people that they have been suspended for abuse violations, and explain which policy or policies they have violated and which content was in violation.

Violators can appeal permanent suspensions if they believe we made an error. They can do this through the platform interface or by filing a report. Upon appeal, if we find that a suspension is valid, we respond to the appeal with information on the policy that the account has violated.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/enforcement-options

From the Twitter help page.


ETA
Trump actually got kicked off Twitter for a third time last night after attempting to use his official campaign account @TeamTrump to post the same screed as the one deleted from @POTUS. That account is now permanently suspended as well.

[Lomax]

This never-dull thread started, by Toucana, in June 2017. Is this the end, or should we continue to gaze upon the drolleries, outrages, atrocities, and ever-surfacing Krakens of other platforms, and the myriad grotesque incarnations of Trumpism therein?

First as tragedy, then as whack-a-mole.

[Serpent]

Give it another couple of weeks; let the whole sordid melodrama play out.
I'll miss it, but I'm sure Toucana will find us something just as good.

[TheVat]

Lomax rephrases Karl Marx, perhaps more in the spirit of Groucho Marx. Now that the whack a mole game is well underway, with Apple and Google choking off Parler* app sales, it will be amusing to see if the Trumpistas are willing to go after venture capital for putting up their own platform. We may well get Karl's farce, as this plays out.

ETA --- * (and amazon has cut off its web hosting services to Parler)

[toucana]

According to the latest QAnon conspiracy theory now trending on Gab, Telegram and TikTok, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 19th president of the USA on the 4th March 2021.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/1/25/2011820/-QAnon-Thinks-Trump-Will-Become-President-Again-on-March-4

For the benfit of those who may be somewhat confused, an article in Rolling Stone explains this in more detail:

Under hashtags like #19thpresident (which has more than 235,000 views), or #march4th (which has more than 1.4 million views) TikTok users are propagating the idea that an obscure 1871 act made the United States a corporation and not a federal government, thus rendering any laws passed after that year moot and U.S. citizens not subject to them.

According to this theory, the United States will revert back to its original form on March 4th, the date when presidents were inaugurated prior to the 1933 passage of the 20th amendment. They believe Trump will be sworn in as the 19th president of the United States. (The 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant, served between 1869 and 1877, or the time period when those who cling to this theory believe the United States “became” a “corporation.”)

This conspiracy theory stems from the principles of the sovereign citizen movement, a fringe movement predicated on a slew of bizarre legal interpretations and theories aimed at “proving” that U.S. citizens are not subject to any laws passed after 1871. There has historically been some minor overlap between the sovereign citizen movement and the QAnon community, says Mike Rothschild, a QAnon expert and author of the book World’s Worst Conspiracies. ” These are people who think that through legal chicanery they can free themselves of U.S. laws and open up huge bank accounts that only they can access,” he says. “These ideas aren’t a million miles from Q, or from the affinity frauds that led up to it. It’s all about believing yourself [to be] above the law and special and ‘chosen’ in ways that normal law-abiding citizens don’t know about.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/qanon-conspiracy-theories-trump-tiktok-1118668/

The Sovereign Citizen movement which dates from 1971 is basically a group of crackpot anarchists and tax protestors who believe the entire US government and all the laws enacted in its name since the close of the 41st Congress in 1871 are invalid and have no authority over them. They don’t even recognize the US currency and regard themselves as “free of any legal constraints”

Back in 2013, the Southern Poverty Law Centre published an interview with a former Iowa Senate candidate called Randi Shannon who abandoned mainstream politics to become a self-styled ’Senator’ for The Republic for the United States of America (RuSA). This article explains some of the views of this movement at that time

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2013/sovereign-senator

In 2015, Assistant Attorney General John P Carlin stated that the Sovereign Citizen movement had become a top concern among FBI and DOJ officials monitoring domestic terrorism in the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement

[Serpent]

But, wait! Isn't 1871 too late for the white supremacist bloc? Now they'll have to secede all over again, only with the presumption that Trump will let them. Afterward, of which America will he president?

[toucana]

Before anyone gives Tom Brady a trophy, don’t forget that the Chiefs have the right to exhaust every legal avenue to challenge the result. It would be irresponsible to congratulate the Buccaneers so early. Many many fans are upset. Wouldn’t want them to lose trust.
https://twitter.com/NubomTrk/status/1358614625881886722

The Lincoln Project
We may never know who truly won
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1358624826148204544

[toucana]

Judge Roy Ferguson

@JudgeFergusonTX

IMPORTANT ZOOM TIP: If a child used your computer, before you join a virtual hearing check the Zoom Video Options to be sure filters are off. This kitten just made a formal announcement on a case in the 394th (sound on). #lawtwitter #OhNo
@zoom_us
https://youtu.be/KxlPGPupdd8
6:06 PM · Feb 9, 2021

A lawyer appearing before a judge in a virtual court case popped up on screen as a cartoon cat - after failing to realise a feline filter was switched on.

https://news.sky.com/story/im-here-live-judge-im-not-a-cat-lawyers-virtual-court-case-feline-filter-faux-pas-12213752

The Texas lawman was forced to face the nightmare many have feared during the COVID-19 pandemic and the age of non-stop Zoom calls, when it is believed his child had used the computer before him and left a cat filter on the camera.

ETA - "I'm not a cat" - A clear case of purr-jury if there ever was one !

[toucana]

Shortly after 2:00pm on 1/6 as a violent mob breached the Capitol building, Trump accidentally phoned Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, while trying to reach Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama. Lee reportedly handed the phone to the Alabama senator, according to CNN and Utah's Deseret News. 

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/11/trump-impeachment-trial-timeline-trump-actions-during-capitol-riot/6720727002/

“I said ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,'” Tuberville (R-Ala.) told POLITICO on Capitol Hill on Wednesday night, saying he cut the phone call short amid the chaos.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/11/tuberville-pences-evacuation-trump-impeachment-468572

It would appear that Trump misunderstood what Tuberville said. The president did not know who the “they” Tuberville was referring to were - and he assumed he was being told that Pence had been captured and possibly killed by the mob

Contrary to media reports, Trump was not told, Pence “had been evacuated” or “removed.” Tuberville, by his own repeated admissions, said “they just took the vice president out.”

Assuming that Mike Pence was perhaps now dead, president Trump then tweeted this ‘eulogy’ to his vice-president at 2.24pm

"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify, USA demands the truth!"

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/12/2015674/-Trump-Believed-Pence-had-been-Captured-Then-Tweeted-Pence-s-Eulogy

[toucana]

So I’m not getting a vaccine next week - was feeling weird about why I’d been selected ahead of others so rang GP to check. Turns out they had my height as 6.2cm rather than 6 ft 2, giving me a BMI of 28,000
— Liam Thorp(@LiamThorpECHO) February 17, 2021

UK journalist Liam Thorpe who works as political editor for the Liverpool Echo was baffled when he was offered his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for next week, so decided to investigate with his GP to find out why.

As it turned out, he had been classified as morbidly obese because his height had somehow been listed as 6.2cm (instead of 6 feet 2 inches) - giving him a BMI of 28,000 and putting him in a high-risk group for becoming seriously ill with coronavirus.

"I mean I’ve put on a few pounds in lockdown but not that many," he joked.