Especially so, since he is on top of the heap of the chain of command until Jan 20, 2021.
What to make of this…
nytimes.com/2020/12/29/opin … e=Homepage
[b]President Trump recently tweeted that “the ‘Justice’ Department and FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud,” followed by these more ominous lines: “Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th.”
The unmistakable reference is to the day Congress will count the Electoral College’s votes, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding. Mr. Trump is leaning on the vice president and congressional allies to invalidate the November election by throwing out duly certified votes for Joe Biden.
Mr. Pence thus far has not said he would do anything like that, but his language is worrisome. Last week, he said: “We’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We’re going to win Georgia, we’re going to save America,” as a crowd screamed, “Stop the steal.”[/b]
This is one of things that most of us “outside the beltway” are just not sure exactly how much it can be taken seriously.
There’s this take…
[b]But as a matter of constitutional text and history, any effort on Jan. 6 is doomed to fail. It would also be profoundly anti-democratic and unconstitutional.
Both Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment say that the votes of the Electoral College are to be opened by the “president of the Senate,” meaning the vice president. The Electoral Count Act, passed in 1887 to avoid chaotic counts like the one that followed the 1876 election, adds important details. It provides a detailed timeline to tabulate electoral votes, culminating with the final count to take place on Jan. 6, and it delineates the powers of the vice president.
He is to be the “presiding officer” (meaning he is to preserve order and decorum), open the ballot envelopes, provide those results to a group of tellers, call for any objection by members of Congress, announce the results of any votes on objections, and ultimately announce the result of the vote.
Nothing in either the text of the Constitution or the Electoral Count Act gives the vice president any substantive powers. His powers are ministerial, and that circumscribed role makes general sense: The whole point of an election is to let the people decide who will rule them. If an incumbent could simply maneuver to keep himself in office — after all, a maneuver to protect Mr. Trump also protects Mr. Pence — the most foundational precept of our government would be gravely undermined. In America, “we the people,” not “we, the vice president,” control our destiny.
The drafters of the Electoral Count Act consciously insisted on this weakened role for the vice president. They guarded against any pretense he might have to throw out a particular state’s votes, saying that the vice president must open “all certificates and papers purporting to be” electoral votes. They further said, in the event of a dispute, both chambers of Congress would have to disagree with a particular state’s slate of electoral votes to reject them. And they made it difficult for Congress to disagree, adding measures such as a “safe harbor” provision and deference to certification by state officials.
In this election, certification is clear. There are no ongoing legal challenges in the states of any merit whatsoever. All challenges have lost, spectacularly and often, in the courts. The states and the electors have spoken their will. Neither Vice President Pence nor the loyal followers of President Trump have a valid basis to contest anything.[/b]
Still, we’re talking Trumpworld here, right?
The Washington Post is bursting at the seams with op-eds today reminding us to “stay tuned”:
washingtonpost.com/opinions … able-test/
washingtonpost.com/opinions … n-do-over/
washingtonpost.com/opinions … s-failure/
January 6th. Mark it on your calendar.
There’s what the liberal press assures us will happen, and there’s the “chaos” that Donald Trump revels in in order to keep those on the left at least a bit anxious.
And this only a day after the Georgia rerun elections to decide the fate of the Senate.
So, stay tuned.
One thing for sure, I suspect: the Deep State will settle for anything.
Stay tuned indeed!
nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/p … e=Homepage
[b]WASHINGTON — President Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense” during an hourlong telephone call on Saturday, according to an audio recording of the conversation.
Mr. Trump, who has spent almost nine weeks making false conspiracy claims about his loss to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., told Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, that he should recalculate the vote count so Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, would end up winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr. Trump said during the conversation, according to a recording first obtained by The Washington Post, which published it online Sunday. The New York Times also acquired a recording of Mr. Trump’s call.
The president, who will be in charge of the Justice Department for the 17 days left in his administration, hinted that Mr. Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the chief lawyer for secretary of state’s office, could be prosecuted criminally if they did not do his bidding.[/b]
One thing seems crystal clear: Trump is deadly serious about all this.
Who really knows how far he is willing to go in the next 17 days to stay in power.
I always imagined him instigating a foreign policy crisis and then arguing that he must remain in power in order to contain it. Will he?
And the January 6th showdown in the Congress: npr.org/sections/biden-tran … ge-results
The liberal press assures us that it is all futile. But, again, we’re talking Trump here.
I’m actually beginning to imagine that he really will have to be forcefully removed from the Oval Office! The sheer spectacle of it!!
Stay tuned…on steroids.
nytimes.com/2021/01/04/us/p … e=Homepage
[b]WASHINGTON — President Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, led not by outside revolutionaries intent on bringing down the system but by the very leader charged with defending it.
In the 220 years since a defeated John Adams turned over the White House to his rival, firmly establishing the peaceful transfer of power as a bedrock principle, no sitting president who lost an election has tried to hang onto power by rejecting the Electoral College and subverting the will of the voters — until now. It is a scenario at once utterly unthinkable and yet feared since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s tenure.
The president has gone well beyond simply venting his grievances or creating a face-saving narrative to explain away a loss, as advisers privately suggested he was doing in the days after the Nov. 3 vote, but instead has pressed the boundaries of tradition, propriety and the law to find any way he can to cling to office beyond his term that expires in two weeks. That he is almost certain to fail does not mitigate the damage he is doing to democracy by undermining public faith in the electoral system.[/b]
What to make of liberal reactions like this. On the one hand, we are always assured that all of this bluster on Trumps part is just that, a tempest in a teapot.
On the other hand, there seems to be a real concern brewing that anything is possible between now and January 20th.
Or, sure, just your typical inside the beltway crisis being built up to create new subscriptions.
These appearent either/or choices only serve to reinforce the fact/ fiction general contriversy, a literal description of the need to refo m ulate the existing bathos in the mire of the supposed sinkhole , to show how deep and filthy , as all pervasive is the swamp.
With the escalated rhetoric right now, I would be surprised if we make it through the next year without a major political assassination taking place. Truly unfortunate IMO.
And would it really surprise anyone if the assassin was someone who is posting here?
lol no but sadly there are 74MM other potential suspects.
one of the points to understand is that
IQ45 is physically a coward…he would make absolutely
sure he wasn’t involved in any kind of physical work himself…
personally, I wouldn’t be surprise if violence or blood, makes him
physically ill… just another right wing gutless coward…
the only reason a right winger feels like a man his because he has
his gun… take away a right wingers gun and you emasculate him…
the right winger “gun” is impotent so he makes it up with real guns…
no wonder the right are so attached their guns…
yes, why do you ask that I am anti-right wing these days?
fucking gutless cowards…
Kropotkin
Headlines:
“Pence and Lawmakers Evacuate as Protesters Storm Capitol, Halting Count of Electoral Votes”
“Capitol on lockdown as protesters breach building”
You know what the Chinese say: “May you live in interesting times.”
Of course that is generally thought to be a curse.
So, are they freedom fighters or Sturmabteilung? Liberators or thugs?
Yo, dasein!
Oh, and this part:
Headline:
With brazen assault on election, Trump prompts critics to warn of a coup
washingtonpost.com/politics … story.html
[b]During four years in office, President Trump has trampled political norms, attacked democratic institutions, sought to discredit government agencies, peddled baseless conspiracy theories and been impeached by the House.
Since his defeat in the November election, Trump’s critics have warned that his scorched-earth effort to invalidate the outcome amounts to a new level of danger: the first attempted coup d’etat in U.S. history to illegally maintain power.
The chorus of alarm grew this week after the disclosure that Trump bullied and threatened Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in an hour-long private phone call Saturday, during which the president demanded that Raffensperger find thousands of votes for Trump that do not exist.
On social media, conservative and liberal pundits alike used the word “coup.” So did former George W. Bush aide Nicolle Wallace, Trump biographer Timothy L. O’Brien, political analyst Larry Sabato and Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster and founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative. The Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Nation, Vanity Fair, New York magazine and the BBC have invoked the term to explore the ramifications of Trump’s assault on the nation’s democratic foundations.
“If this isn’t an attempted coup then what is it?!” Charles M. Blow, a liberal columnist for the New York Times, asked on Twitter.
Historians described Trump’s actions as dangerous, irresponsible, harmful and unprecedented, but most said his behavior does not yet meet the formal academic definition of an attempted coup, which typically describes a military-backed effort to seize power from a legitimate government. Senior Pentagon officials have made clear that the military has no role in the fallout over Trump’s election defeat.[/b]
He blinks!
“Transfer of Power: Trump acknowledges new administration.”
“In a new video, Trump addresses violence at the Capitol and says ‘a new administration’ will be sworn in.”
So, shouldn’t we expect some of the fulminating fanatics here to condemn this? Isn’t Trump being a traitor to the cause? What, no evoking the Insurrection Act? He sends them to Capitol Hill claiming he will never concede. Then the very next day he does.
Or this all just another ruse…
Yep, it’s gone this far:
“Pelosi says she spoke to nation’s top military leader about ensuring Trump doesn’t launch a nuclear attack”
[b]House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told colleagues in a letter Friday that she has spoken to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, about keeping an “unstable president” from accessing the nuclear codes.
Her letter came shortly after President Trump tweeted that he would not attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20, breaking with a long-standing tradition of outgoing presidents attending the swearing-in ceremony of their successors. Biden told reporters that he agreed with Trump’s decision to skip the ceremony, though he would welcome Vice President Pence.[/b] Washington Post
That’s something I’ve thought about from time to time. Someone like Trump or Putin or Kim Jong-un figuring to take as many of us out with them when they go.
Like someone with HIV or another deadly disease deliberately infecting others out of bitterness or despair. Only with nuclear warheads.
This is all trumpf’s father and grandfather’s fault, really. He was psychologically traumatized by the tremendous, tremendous pressure put on him to succeed, and the incredible, incredible impact that had as he felt unable to live up to that standard. It’s not that don is a failure, but that he is beyond his means and his place. He should’ve never been bought through school and instead shoulda took up a job selling car insurance. Something more fitting to his true menial character and nature.
A simplistic bore like him should never have that much money. That just cant be right. It should be like a violation of the laws of physics or something.
Biggy, ill get You for plagarism, my mention of this came before Your notice in my ‘Trump takes the stage’ forum. Just putting You on notice.
Nought! Justt kidding.!
But seriously, what probibility is there, that Trump could risk such a foolhardy attempt?
The next outrage?
washingtonpost.com/outlook/ … story.html
[b]Federal prosecutors in Washington say they may investigate whether President Trump broke the law Wednesday when he urged a crowd of his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn the election results shortly before a mob surged into the Capitol and disrupted the certification of the electoral college vote. The prospect of a seditious conspiracy charge — or any other — against Trump only increases the chances that the nation will enter uncharted legal territory soon. Unless the president plans to step down at the 11th hour of his term, allowing Vice President Pence to assume office and pardon him, he has only one option to shield himself from potential prosecution: a self-pardon.
But if Trump tries that, he will set in motion an endgame that may prove to be his own undoing.
He already faces criminal jeopardy on multiple fronts: The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is in possession of evidence of a potential campaign finance violation that Trump may have committed before he became president. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III compiled evidence of multiple instances of obstruction of justice, outlined in his 2019 report. And Trump’s call last weekend to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger provides at least a basis to investigate possible violations of federal law against election fraud.[/b]
Again, this is purely a gut feeling on my part but I suspect that, given my own understanding of the “deep state”, the powers that be will do little or nothing to actually “lock him up”.
Instead, the argument will revolve around bringing the nation together. Yeah, Trump was a particular grotesque outlier, but it’s time now to move forward and return the country back to “normal”.
Stay tuned.
Bottom line [mine]:
There were generally two dire concerns on the part of many in regard to the timespan between the election and the inauguration:
1] that Trump would declare martial law to remain in power
2] that he would instigate some sort of international crisis that might lead to one or another rendition of war – with Iran, with North Korea…with China?
It didn’t happen. I suspect because he is putting all of his eggs in a Don Sr, Don Jr. or Ivanka presidential campaign in 2024.
Now the question becomes whether or not my own rendition of the Deep State decides to go after him legally or not. My gut says no.
Then this part:
Inauguration Live Updates: Biden and Harris Are Sworn In, Kicking Off New Era in Washington
headline in New York Times
Right. Like the Clinton or the Obama administration ushered in a “new era” in regard to the crony capitalist plutocracy that still rules the roost.
Yes, in regard to any number of “social issues”, the Democrats are in fact “in reality” different from Republicans. And that’s no small thing.
But in regard to meat and potato economic and foreign policy issues Biden and the Democratic Party leadership are, in my view, still very much ensconced in this: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … s#p2187045
Therefore, the focus of this thread – stay tuned! – will revolve around that. Measuring my own perceived gap between a Bernie Sanders “democratic socialist” agenda and a Joe Biden “crony capitalist” agenda.
This is what many are looking for now in regard to the Biden presidency:
nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/p … e=Homepage
[b]As Wall Street booms, unemployment has hit record highs with nearly 10 million fewer people holding jobs than at the beginning of last year — a situation that reminds some former officials of the 2008 economic crisis that led to both the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements.
“It’s not about Republicans and Democrats,” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and an ally of Mr. Trump. “It’s lots and lots of normal, everyday people who began to figure out they really got ripped off for the last year just like they got ripped off in 2008 and 2009.” He added, “What you’re seeing is an almost spontaneous cultural reaction in which the little guys and gals are getting together and going after the bigs, so the bigs are having to rig the game in order to survive.”
On Reddit, the online site that helped fuel the surge, few of the mostly young participants frame their flood of investments in clearly partisan terms. Yet many write of being driven by anger over the 2008 financial bailouts that kept the big banks afloat while 10 million Americans lost their homes.
“When that crisis hit our family, we were able to keep our little house, but we lived off of pancake mix, and powdered milk, and beans and rice for a year,” one person identified as ssauronn posted on Reddit. “Your ilk were bailed out and rewarded for terrible and illegal financial decisions that negatively changed the lives of millions.”
Other posters responded with their own stories of economic struggle and political rage.
“Forget republican/democrat, left/right… the bankers play both sides and have almost always come out on top,” a poster identified as ChrisFrettJunior wrote, after recounting watching his parents struggle through the 2008 recession.
The decision to bail out the biggest banks and also decline to prosecute any of their top executives led to much of the populist fervor that has driven American politics in the past decade. The Tea Party surged to political prominence in the wake of the $700 billion financial rescue package that passed in 2008, eventually becoming a force that defeated both moderate Republicans and Democrats.[/b]
Okay, Joe, 1] what are your own views on all of and this and 2] what are you and the Democratic leadership in Congress going to do about it?
You know, given that Obama basically came down on no changes at all that we can believe in.
This is what actually unites many on the left and the right here. One or another rendition of the deep state ruling class rigging “the system” to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. There is simply a “liberal” and a “conservative” narrative. And for some [on the right] the issue of race and the Jews and the homosexuals.
Stay tuned.