2000 Mules Movie, a follow up

Politics and Social Issues
1

We had a 2000 Mules movie thread, but it’s been locked up, so I’m starting a new one to share an important update on this piece of typical Republican malicious dishonesty in action.

“2000 Mules” is a case study in how appealing, lucrative falsehoods endure.

Analysis by Philip Bump - June 3, 2024

The analysis from True the Vote was at the center of a movie that D’Souza was preparing for release — hence his challenge to me. I quickly accepted, and D’Souza provided me a copy to preview.

My initial assessment of True the Vote’s claims — which ran under the prescient headline “‘Ballot trafficking’ is the next front in the unending fight over 2020” — noted that the group’s methodology couldn’t accomplish what it claimed to have accomplished. …

From the outset, in other words, the claims in “2000 Mules” and the assessments of True the Vote were not credible. That lack of credibility only increased over time. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, for example, indicated that it would not launch a probe into the alleged activity, asking True the Vote to reveal its whistleblower; the group ultimately said it had no names of whistleblowers to offer. The group promised to release all its information for public scrutiny before announcing that it wouldn’t. There was one map of the visits to drop boxes made by an alleged “mule” shown in the movie, but Phillips told The Washington Post that it was fake.

What the movie did have, though, was an argument that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump — an argument that was cleverly cloaked in the aesthetic of a serious investigation and a complicated, data-driven examination. D’Souza explicitly argued …

Of course, the folks who really need to read this are way too good at ignoring anything that rains on their parade.

1 Like
2

This is awesome, but these guys know that they already got the misinformation out. Propagandadists count on how long it takes to debunk them. I came across in Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter. Few conservatives read it.

1 Like
3

GOP the anti-voter party.

Jun 4, 2024 Democracy Watch with BTC & Marc Elias

Democracy Watch episode 132: Marc Elias discusses the Supreme Court’s long-awaited decision in South Carolina.

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a ruling by a federal district court holding that a congressional district on the South Carolina coast was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, it sorted voters based primarily on their race. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the justices cleared the way for the state to use the map going forward. The 6-3 decision, with the justices divided on ideological lines, means that the disputed district will remain a safe seat for Republicans, who hold a 6-1 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation. More broadly, Thursday’s decision creates a high bar for plaintiffs in future racial gerrymandering cases to meet.

The issue at the center of the case was how courts should distinguish between the roles played in redistricting by race and party affiliation, when there are often close correlations between the two. In South Carolina, for example, exit polls in the 2020 election indicated that at least 90% of Black voters supported Democrat Joe Biden.

A lower court in March ordered the map to be used for the 2024 elections, after the Supreme Court failed to rule in the case by a proposed Jan. 1 deadline.

In his opinion for the majority, Alito rejected the lower court’s conclusion that the state’s Republican-controlled legislature had improperly relied too heavily on race in drawing the challenged district. “[I]nferring bad faith based on the racial effects of a political gerrymander in a jurisdiction in which race and partisan preference are very closely correlated” would, Alito suggested, allow litigants and courts to circumvent the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, holding that federal courts should not consider claims of partisan gerrymandering. Specifically, Alito posited, litigants could simply “repackage” their claims that legislatures relied too heavily on partisanship as contentions that the legislatures relied too much on race. …

4

A good topic. Would like to follow up with you on this posting. Just got too much going on right now. This topic needs some sunshine on it. Watergate was nothing compared to the voting fraud

5

By whom?
Apparently you are unaware that it is Trump who is fixing to commit voter-fraud.
He tried it once already, with ordering the then vice-presidenr Pence to holdup certification of a legal electionthat Biden won by:

By the time all races were called, Biden had received more than 78 million votes across the country — the most votes cast for any presidential candidate in history. That number is likely to grow as final counts come in from Democratic-leaning states, such as California and New York.
By how many votes did Joe Biden beat Donald Trump - Washington Post

As to Watergate, let me remind you that Watergate was a Republican attempt at voter fraud and Nixon was a Republican president. This is why he had to resign under threat of impeachment.

6

It’s been a bit since I watched the movie that I’m not sure how this relates to it. I may have to re-watch the movie to know.

7

Two strikes already. What you stated was mostly what is now described using a new word, “Lawfare”. And as far as Watergate. I don’t care if it was Republican or Democrat.

Would you not agree that Watergate showed that unitary executive theory is at odds with Article Two of the constitution? And that would be in line with the issues at hand today dealing with what is going on with political maneuvering.

8

I agree that Biden won by receiving more votes. That is not the issue here. The issue is can you show me that you can connect those votes to one American citizen per vote. And that American citizen did actually voted.

9

How many challenges resulted in proof of voter-fraud?

Exhaustive fact check finds little evidence of voter fraud, but 2020’s ‘Big Lie’ lives on

Dec 17, 2021 6:30 PM EDT

More than a year after President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump and his allies still insist without evidence that widespread voter fraud led to a stolen election. A new reporting project from the Associated Press shows that is false, finding fewer than 475 potential instances out of more than 25 million votes cast. Judy Woodruff speaks to reporter Christina Cassidy.
Exhaustive fact check finds little evidence of voter fraud, but 2020’s ‘Big Lie’ lives on | PBS News

10

Better check your sources. Didn’t they also say that the laptop was Russian disinformation? I better check too. Do you believe the laptop is Russian disinformation? If so, then we have gone as far on this debate as possible. If you agree that the your sources were part of a Lawfare operation then let’s talk.

11

As long as you trust Russian intelligence and worldwide disinformation network more than US independent news organizations , we will never come to a satisfactory solution and further discussion is futile.

12

Your statement is an oxymoron. The AP was structured to control America’s psychological viewpoints. US independent news organizations are far and few. Were you around during Operation Mockingbird?

13

You didn’t answer. Do you believe the laptop is Russian disinformation? It is a simple yes or no question.
Russian intelligence and just about all intelligence services are part of a national-security system and is called upon to protect individuals, society and the state from foreign threats. That requires twisting the truth.
I use news sites from around the world.
For example. One of the items I am watching right now is the loss of fertilization and miscarriages due to covid vaccine. Could that be a reason for bringing in so many illegals from low vaccinated countries?
The data seems to be only available on oversea sites. One good source of truth use to be Russian TV news here in America. That was taken off the air. What was going on with Covid in America seem to be available only after it was released in a another country first. American news has been controlled on political issues for years now.

14

Really?
Well, here is a posit by someone on Quora, who apparently has followed this story in-depth and it looks a little more complicated than a simple yes or no.

In 2020 Rudy Giuliani claimed to have come into possession of a laptop previously belonging to Hunter Biden. The story he told was that a Hunter Biden had gone into a shop and handed over a laptop among other computer equipment to a blind repair technician (who thus couldn’t be compelled to say for sure that it was Hunter Biden), then never came back to pick them up causing them to become abandoned property under the law.

This (blind) repair technician then cracked the password protection and started poking around for… no good reason whatsoever apparently and just so happened to find damning emails (stored in untraceable PDF format meaning anyone with a private email server could have faked them) showing Hunter Biden committed every crime under the sun. Then instead of going to the police or the FBI he handed it over to Rudy Giuliani who happens to be a known associate of Donald Trump (assuring no chain of custody could be established thus making this basically inadmissible to any court in the US).

This story had several problems with it that made it basically unbelievable no matter how you slice it.

First; Hunter Biden was nowhere near that repair shop in any reasonable timeframe for this to have happened so whoever it was definitely wasn’t Hunter Biden. At best that means that even if nothing else was wrong this evidence would be illegally obtained as byproduct of a crime and thus inadmissible.

At worst it means that the laptop never belonged to Hunter Biden and was dropped off by a forger intending to invent a controversy in support of Donald Trump.

Second; if the story is true that would mean Rudy Giuliani and that blind repair technician are both admitting to a whole shitload of computer crimes. See when a computer is abandoned the new owner who claims it by right of salvage is legally obligated to wipe it blank not to go poking around to sate their idol curiosity.

Bypassing the password system without permission from the original owner is a crime called “unauthorized computer access” but even poking around in places not required for diagnostic or repair is a crime called “exceeding authorized access”.

> Sharing any date from that computer on to another person is yet another crime, illegal transmission of stolen data. So basically if the story is true they’re both going to jail for a long time regardless of if they found criminal behavior.

Third; as mentioned all the incriminating emails were stored in an untraceable format, so anyone with a private email server could set up an account not connected to the internet and name it “Hunter Biden” then send emails containing whatever they want. Additionally PDF files carry metadata that includes all sorts of statistics about the file including the date that file was created and in this specific case all the incriminating PDFs were created after Rudy Giuliani supposedly got his hands on that laptop. So every indication from the files themselves is that they’re extremely crude forgeries by someone who didn’t know jack crap about computers leaving very obvious evidence of forgery.

I could go on but that’s about the same pattern that will repeat across the whole thing, crude forgeries and accidentally admitting to criminal behavior in an attempt to smear Joe Biden by proxy.

So, where does the Russian Laptop prove anything?

15

Russia doesn’t protect anyone except Putin and what Putin wants people to know. If anyone says anything Putin doesn’t want people to know the leaker is murdered, mostly by neuro poison. Russian TV is nothing but propaganda and hardly truth. It’s worse than Faux um Fox News.

That is a myth and totally not true. PLEASE get vaccinated. The vaccine will keep you alive if you get COVID. And for the love of humanity! Please stop spreading misinformation about vaccines.

They’re low vaccinated because their governments are poor and don’t give a damn about their people. The immigrants come here for a better life and by default better health care.

1 Like
16

All I said was that I was watching subject. It is concerning to me and I hope it turns out to be nothing. I was giving this as an example of why I have to go outside of the US to get data. Here is an example: Dr. John Campbell
If you watch Dr. Campbell, let me know what you think of the issue.

17

You’ve got to be kidding. I cannot believe you are a Christian in the mold of Christ helping the poor.

Speaking of doctors well-versed in pandemics, I hope Dr Fauci will receive National recognition and a medal for his meritoriuos work on epidemic diseases.

The slanderous accusation by ignorant wannabe medical experts must be countered by recognizing the millions of lives he may have saved during his many years of dedicated service to the eradication of infectious diseases.

Anthony Stephen Fauci is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, and the chief medical advisor to the president from 2021 to 2022. Wikipedia

How cruel it is to “crucify” this National medical hero.

18

I do and I think he’s being an alarmist. I’ve had 6 COVID vaccines and my husband 5. My mother has had at least 5. We’re all fine. Also, my doctor is glad we’ve done that.

19

So, where does the Russian Laptop prove anything?

You should be in congress. They never answer a question either. Simple yes or no. Do you believe the Laptop is Russian disinformation? Do I believe the Laptop is Russian disinformation. NO. There is no common ground for debate if you can’t respond.

20

[quote=“mikeyohe, post:19, topic:10890, full:true”]
So, where does the Russian Laptop prove anything?

You should be in congress. They never answer a question either. Simple yes or no. Do you believe the Laptop is Russian disinformation?

I don’t know and neither do you. From experience I do tend to favor US honesty over Russian honesty.
You seem to forget that Putin was head of the KGB (Russian Intelligence) before he inherited the presidency

Do I believe the Laptop is Russian disinformation. NO.

Well, there you have it.
You may believe what you want, but you really don’t know either.

There is no common ground for debate if you can’t respond.

We are having a debate, you just want agreement to your argument.