Flotsam and Jetsam: A Day of Rest For Elon and Crew

Elon Musk and his crew of evil free speech minded liberals took the sabbath off, so we can continue to digest the results from the first week's revelations. At JTN, 'Twitter Files Part 4’ details how platform changed policy specifically to ban ‘Trump alone’ "Thread details process Twitter execs took to make "case for a permanent ban” with “no concern for the free speech or democracy implications.” 'Fuzzy Slippers' at LI, #Twitterfiles Part 4: ‘The Removal of Donald Trump’ From Twitter, “As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban.” WION News, Twitter Files 4.0 reveal how executives changed policies to permanently ban Trump. Sundance at CTH, Twitter Files #4 Released, Rules Changed to Target Trump – While Elon Musk Hints COVID Censorship Files Are Forthcoming. 

People are starting to ask questions about why so many officials from the U.S. intelligence community were hired by Twitter.  Perhaps the Potemkin Village, the face of Twitter, may soon drop as people realize what Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop was really all about.  As the smart question is asked, “Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles?”

From PM, Michelle Obama pressured Twitter to ban Trump: Twitter Files "Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior—and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms," Michelle Obama said a day before Trump was banned." As a private citizen, she's entitled to her opinion. My opinion is the people who want to ban other people should be banned.

At Da Caller, ‘Prosecute Fauci’: Musk Takes Aim At Outgoing NIAID Director. Matt Margolis at PJ Media, Elon Musk Declares His Preferred Pronouns... and They're EPIC! "Prosecute/Fauci." From Twitchy, Jimmy Kimmel was so upset over Elon Musk’s pronouns joke that he replied with a pronouns joke "Ass/Hole," which is about as funny as Jimmel gets theses days. Scott Morefield at Town Hall, Elon Musk Annihilates Two Leftist Shibboleths With A Single Five Word Tweet, And They Are Big Mad. Althouse, Elon Musk defends his tweet that just said "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." "My reaction, yesterday, was just "Yikes" — the post title — and, in the comments: "I'm more shocked that he made a casual 'pronouns' joke than that he expressed a desire to see F prosecuted (and without naming the crime or citing any evidence)." Today, I'm seeing:"

I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.

As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

Althouse, again, "I spent the afternoon yesterday at Twitter HQ at the invitation of @elonmusk to find out more about the trend 'blacklist' that twitter placed on me & more." "Tweets Dr. Jay Bhattacharya." So it's pretty clear where the Twitter team is going next.

From Dan Chaitin at Da Wire, Musk Fires Back At Schiff Over Hate Speech On Twitter. 

Singling out “Elon Musk’s Twitter,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) shared statistics showing a rise in “slurs” against black people, women, Jewish people, and gay men. “These numbers are abysmal – and unacceptable,” Schiff said in a tweet, adding that he and Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) were “demanding action” in response to the numbers.

Musk replied to the tweet hours later. “False, hate speech impressions are actually down by 1/3 for Twitter now vs prior to acquisition,” Musk retorted.

Must be because of all the liberals who quit Twitter after the take over /sarc. The Peacock screams Why liberal Washington can’t quit Twitter "They may hate Elon Musk, but they’re not leaving Twitter yet. “You will have to pry my fingers from my phone.”" Insty, JOHN ROBB DISSECTS ELON MUSK’S TWITTER STRATEGY. 

Jazz Shaw at Haut Hair wonders So when will Jack Dorsey be indicted for lying to Congress? Never. One of the unwritten rules is that it's actually OK, and laudable to lie to Republicans. Jonathon Turley, Dupe or Designated Defendant? The Criminal Case Against Jack Dorsey "It is an ironic turn of events since Dorsey supported the takeover by Elon Musk and has called for all files to be released without filtering. Dorsey has the feel of a “designated defendant,” someone who was pushed forward by others to take any legal hit." Sundance again, Sunday Talks, California Democrat Rep Ro Khanna Discusses Twitter-Govt Censorship, Future Hearings and TikTok. OK, but not embed worthy. Insty, MEMORY HOLE: Brick Suit@Brick_Suit "@Penn, Your stated policy is that as of December 2015 you require "open access publication of PhD dissertations." Yoel Roth submitted his dissertation in 2016. Early today it was freely available to download. At the time of this tweet it has been withdrawn. What happened?" "Background: Former Twitter exec Yoel Roth argued for minors’ access to adult internet services in PhD thesis." Don Surber concludes We don't have a free press. Oh, they're free to do what they want, and that's pretty much to support Democrats.

Althouse refutes Rupar in regarding Kyrsten Sinema in Phoniness is inherent in the nature of the enterprise. The real question is whether she has chosen the best way to play the game. Commenter chuck said... "Ah, Aaron Rupar. I like Sinema better already." Atop Da Hill, Chris Christie says Joe Manchin will never be a Republican. To twist Billy Joel, You may be right but for all I know you may be wrong.

Mike LaChance at LI, Kevin McCarthy Plans to Subpoena Intel Experts Who Signed Letter Calling Hunter Biden Laptop Russian Disinfo, “Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you more information, but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?” Althouse, "Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong, was Russia collusion, many of them have a security clearance." Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media, McCarthy Toughens Up Before Speaker Fight—Will It Be Enough? "To the surprise of no one, House Republicans are trying to ruin the smaller-than-expected victory that they had in November. Republican politicians are notorious for shoving their heads into the mouths of gift horses whenever they show up."

Jazz Shaw at Haut Hair wonders about a Third run for Bernie Sanders? Run, Bernie, run! Go full independent this time. I know it work! "You’ll notice that Sanders doesn’t appear to be reading from a teleprompter by watching how his eyes remain locked on the camera. He speaks smoothly and coherently, staying on topic with only the occasional pause in his words. Compare that to virtually any video you can find of Joe Biden and you’ll likely conclude that Sanders is still probably in complete control of his faculties while Biden simply seems lost."

KT at Haut Hair sees Help is on the way for Hunter Biden as teams of supporters go on the offense. Can he smear his way clear of the scandal?

AZ Sun Times Kari Lake Files Lawsuit Loaded with Evidence Contesting Election Results

He said Maricopa County officials’ cavalier attitude about the problems and their lack of trying to find out what happened is telling. “Does anybody believe this widespread failure, oh shucks, just happened?” he wondered.

The complaint alleged that the number of illegal votes cast in the election “far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin” between the two candidates, a difference of .67 percent. It said Democrat Katie Hobbs did not receive the highest number of votes due to illegal votes.

Clay Parikh, a cyber expert who has extensive experience performing security tests on voting systems, including the type used in Maricopa County, stated that due to the lack of certification of some of the voting systems, the numerous procedural violations, the widespread failure of the tabulation process, the failure to provide proper instructions to handle the problem after it started, and the incorrect explanations given to the public, the election failures “can only be described as intentional.”

The complaint alleged that “tens of thousands of mail-in and drop box ballots” did not satisfy signature requirements. Three Maricopa County signature verification employees signed affidavits stating that they rejected signatures as mismatching up to 40 percent of the time. However, when they showed up for work the next day, they would see only about 10 percent of those ballots reappear for signature curing. One of the reviewers believes a manager was approving the mismatched ballots instead.

The complaint cited a previous report by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, which found that the early ballot signature verification used by Maricopa County “may be insufficient to guard against abuse.” An analysis found that bad signatures were rejected 14 times more often during the August primary Election in Maricopa County than during the 2020 General Election.

The lawsuit alleged that between 15,603 and 29,257 Republicans were disenfranchised who would have voted for Lake, according to a calculation performed by data analyst Richard Baris of Big Data Poll who surveyed voters about whether they experienced problems on Election Day. Due to the extremely high numbers of Republicans voting in person on election day, those votes were expected to fall 70 percent to Lake, 30 percent to Hobbs.

The complaint stated that 132 of the county’s 223 vote centers, or 59 percent, were affected, far more than the 70 acknowledged by county officials. It went over county election officials minimizing the problem, refusing to acknowledge the full extent of it, such as the long lines or how long it continued into the day, and provided affidavits from voters regarding how long they waited in line. It cited testimony regarding numerous voters who left without voting. The lawsuit also cited commingling the misread ballots, known as “Door 3” ballots, with tabulated ballots.

The complaint stated that “hundreds of thousands” of mail-in ballots lacked a chain of custody. It said over 298,942 ballots delivered to third-party signature verification service Runbeck on Election Day lacked a chain of custody, a class 2 misdemeanor. A Runbeck employee and other observers provided affidavits regarding witnessing this. The Runbeck employee also stated there were at least 9,530 duplicate ballots printed and issued with no chain of custody. Two days after the election, 25,000 more ballots were found which lacked a chain of custody.

The lawsuit cited an investigation into the 2020 election conducted by We the People AZ Alliance (WPAA), which found many incidents where Arizonans discovered they had been registered to vote or their voter registration had been changed, unbeknownst to them. WPAA reviewed 12.12 percent of the signatures on ballot envelopes in the Maricopa County 2020 election and found that 18,022 were clearly mismatches, and 19,631 failed the Arizona Secretary of State’s standards. This translated to 156,000 likely mismatches countywide and 165,600 failing the standards, yet the county only rejected 587 ballots for mismatched signatures. WPAA discovered that thousands of those same voters voted again in the 2022 election.

The complaint cited free speech violations, pointing to an information-sharing program that Hobbs, Maricopa County Election officials and Richer participated in to provide information to the Election Misinformation Reporting Portal created by the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency. It showed how Hobbs and other officials got election information censored on Twitter and other social media platforms.

The complaint cited a recent Rasmussen Reports poll which found that 72 percent of voters don’t trust Arizona’s election results.

I dunno, sounds kosher to me. At JTN, Election integrity volunteers 'afraid' to attend recount after Michigan AG threatens prosecution "Many of the volunteers, seeking to "scrutinize" Michigan's election process in the aftermath of two controversial ballot proposals, melted away after Democratic AG warned of law enforcement response to possible "criminal acts."" It's illegal to contest Democrats' right to cheat? And Natalia Mittelstadt at JTN, sees Florida county is new focal point of election integrity complaints in pro-election security state "At the Orange County Supervisor of Elections, "it seems as though those who do the right thing in this environment, in this office, are penalized, and those who keep their mouth shut are rewarded," said whistleblower Brian Freid." At Althouse, "A recount in a political race in Massachusetts has flipped a state house of representatives election from Republican to Democrat by a single vote. " 

"Democrat Kristin Kassner won against her Republican opponent and five-term incumbent Lenny Mirra earlier this week after a recount that shrunk the candidates’ narrow vote deficit to one.... In response to that outcome, Mirra said that he will 'absolutely' challenge the result.... 'Some [ballots] were filled out in pencil, some were filled out with different colored ink, some had stray marks. Some had a name written in the write-in and then an oval filled out.'... Meanwhile, Kassner believes that there was no foul-play in the voting process...."