Post election musings

Annachie wrote:Calling it now.

Trump to pardon Pence, then resign and flee.

Pence to then pardon Trump, then resign.

Meaning Pelosi to President for 20 to 30 days, maybe as many as 40, forcing a by election for her seat and a public bun fight over the speakers position.

Followed by a likely second one if Pelosi has a chance to win her seat back.

And no transition authorisation until Pelosi orders it signed.

Do you think Putin has reserved Trump a dacha on the Bkack Sea somewhere?

Your scenario for Trump and Pence doesn't sound all that far fetched. The pardoning power is there and not formally limited in terms of what can be done with it. But I suspect that if what was done was corrupt, it might not stand up in the courts.

Perhaps oddly, I don't find myself all that worried about the transition. Biden should be getting the Intel briefs. But otherwise?? I doubt they would find all that much of value in the files... This has not been a "working" administration, after all. In addition to this, the folks Biden has been recruiting have been the Democratic A team. They are more than capable of coming up with what needs to be done.

A seamless transition would be nice, but we're not going to get it.

Don

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Well, if I see Trump vowing that Biden will never be the 46th President I might worry that it's going to happen.


There's an issue that pardoning yourself might not hold up. Otherwise there's probably no way to challenge a pardon. Even if it's pure corruption.

As for running away, well Trump was looking at building a resort in North Korea ...

n7axw wrote:If we are to pull back from the brink and restore the health of our democracy, we need to turn down the temperature. I know that I have spent an unhealthy amount of time being angry these last four years. When everybody is pissed off, it is hard to either listen or talk.

I have a bit of a different take on that. It's good to be angry, on occasion. It is good to see injustices and want to see them fixed.
The Democrats, for a very long time, have been a centrist party that wasn't willing to change things too much because they were too concerned with "not losing the Republicans"; a cause doomed to failure from the beginning because the Republicans did not then and do not now have the capability to take steps to the left to the same extent that democrats were able and willing to take steps to the right.
Centrism is a failure. No party should have it as their goal; it's supposed to be an emergent consequence of the democratic process. By trying to set centrism as the goal, extremists are free to redefine what centrism is; over the past few decades, the GOP shifted noticeably right, as did the median of US politics, and all because the GOP (unlike the Democrats) completely embraced their radicals.

Always remember that Republicans and their policies aren't popular. When they win elections, they win by gerrymandering, voter suppression, or outdated rules benefitting them -- looking at presidential elections, GOP candidates can win without also winning the popular vote, when the Democrats win, they always win both the electoral college and the popular vote.

My conclusion, thus, must be that it isn't the Democrats or Liberals who need to make changes to make them more appealing to Republicans. It's the other way around.

A very good twitter thread by comedian Christopher Titus on this

n7axw wrote:

Annachie wrote:Calling it now.

Trump to pardon Pence, then resign and flee.

Pence to then pardon Trump, then resign.

Meaning Pelosi to President for 20 to 30 days, maybe as many as 40, forcing a by election for her seat and a public bun fight over the speakers position.

Followed by a likely second one if Pelosi has a chance to win her seat back.

And no transition authorisation until Pelosi orders it signed.

Do you think Putin has reserved Trump a dacha on the Bkack Sea somewhere?

Your scenario for Trump and Pence doesn't sound all that far fetched. The pardoning power is there and not formally limited in terms of what can be done with it. But I suspect that if what was done was corrupt, it might not stand up in the courts.

Perhaps oddly, I don't find myself all that worried about the transition. Biden should be getting the Intel briefs. But otherwise?? I doubt they would find all that much of value in the files... This has not been a "working" administration, after all. In addition to this, the folks Biden has been recruiting have been the Democratic A team. They are more than capable of coming up with what needs to be done.

A seamless transition would be nice, but we're not going to get it.

Don

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On the pardoning issue - I had been given to understand that this was for federal crimes and not state crimes?
and that a lot of the cases coming down the line are state level. So maybe not what we might like to see, but maybe just as effective as Al Capone going down for tax evasion.

I stumbled into a twitter thread which seemed to be populated with the real tin hat trumpists - and they were all crowing about the 12th amendment and how it would do the liberals in - what was that about?

Off topic: Don - I have only just realised that you live in South Dakota. For years I've seen the word 'Viborg' and just assumed that meant Denmark

Speaking of South Dakota - have you seen that sad clip of a EA nurse from SD [IIRC] - talking about the numbers of people with C19, indeed dying from it, who steadfastly deny that is what they have - some wont even let her phone their families.
[edit] Nurse is Jodi Doering [/edit] here is her tweet:

I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days, The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is … Going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have Covid because it’s not real.”

there is also an interview with her on CNN

That's correct. A Federal pardon is only for Federal crimes.

Recently confirmed by SCOTUS.

The E wrote:

n7axw wrote:If we are to pull back from the brink and restore the health of our democracy, we need to turn down the temperature. I know that I have spent an unhealthy amount of time being angry these last four years. When everybody is pissed off, it is hard to either listen or talk.

I have a bit of a different take on that. It's good to be angry, on occasion. It is good to see injustices and want to see them fixed.
The Democrats, for a very long time, have been a centrist party that wasn't willing to change things too much because they were too concerned with "not losing the Republicans"; a cause doomed to failure from the beginning because the Republicans did not then and do not now have the capability to take steps to the left to the same extent that democrats were able and willing to take steps to the right.
Centrism is a failure. No party should have it as their goal; it's supposed to be an emergent consequence of the democratic process. By trying to set centrism as the goal, extremists are free to redefine what centrism is; over the past few decades, the GOP shifted noticeably right, as did the median of US politics, and all because the GOP (unlike the Democrats) completely embraced their radicals.

Always remember that Republicans and their policies aren't popular. When they win elections, they win by gerrymandering, voter suppression, or outdated rules benefitting them -- looking at presidential elections, GOP candidates can win without also winning the popular vote, when the Democrats win, they always win both the electoral college and the popular vote.

My conclusion, thus, must be that it isn't the Democrats or Liberals who need to make changes to make them more appealing to Republicans. It's the other way around.

A very good twitter thread by comedian Christopher Titus on this

I pretty much agree here. But the thing is, if everybody is angry and nobody is willing to turn down the temperature, what's next? Saying that the other guy is at fault is easy. But it does nothing to address the problem which in all likelihood will continue to fester and get worse. So where do we go from here?

Don

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In response to Isaac Newton:

Viborg is a small Danish enclave here in SD. They like to fuss about that even though they aren't nearly as Danish as they used to be.

Yes I saw that piece about the guy who couldn't have gotten covid because covid is a hoax. Heck of a deal to catch a disease that's a hoax, isn't it? About as sad and pathetic as it gets. And there has been a lot of sad and pathetic around lately...

Don

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n7axw wrote:Yes I saw that piece about the guy who couldn't have gotten covid because covid is a hoax. Heck of a deal to catch a disease that's a hoax, isn't it? About as sad and pathetic as it gets. And there has been a lot of sad and pathetic around lately...

And that's the challenge here. How do you get through to people who, on a very fundamental level, do not believe in actual, observable reality, even as said reality does its best to kill them?

The E wrote:

n7axw wrote:Yes I saw that piece about the guy who couldn't have gotten covid because covid is a hoax. Heck of a deal to catch a disease that's a hoax, isn't it? About as sad and pathetic as it gets. And there has been a lot of sad and pathetic around lately...

And that's the challenge here. How do you get through to people who, on a very fundamental level, do not believe in actual, observable reality, even as said reality does its best to kill them?

That is really the underlying question in my own mind when I started this thread. Even worse than killing themselves, they could kill our democracy. I don't have answers. But those of us still sober need to start looking for some...

Don

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n7axw wrote:
That is really the underlying question in my own mind when I started this thread. Even worse than killing themselves, they could kill our democracy. I don't have answers. But those of us still sober need to start looking for some...

Don

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Step 1 is recognizing that this isn't something that just happened. We didn't just coincidentally end up with a massive segment of the US population incapable of engaging with facts... that was the engineered result of a decades long project by the Republican party and US conservatives to create a voter base that was as thoroughly insulated from reality as possible and could thus be sold any absolute BS the party needed them to believe.

It's why Fox News exists. It's why right wing talk radio exists. There was a recent incident on Fox News where one host said to another, on air "Nixon never would have been forced to resign if you existed in your current state back in 1972, ’73, ’74"

That is two prominent right wing commentators accidentally discussing the quiet part out loud. Fox News would have prevented a GUILTY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT from being removed from office if they had existed to feed alternate reality to the Republican voter masses back in the day. That's what they are there for. And they're proud of it.

And the bottom line? It is not fixable as long as that media ecosystem continues to exist, because it has absolutely conditioned it's denizens to reject as false any information that does not come from inside it.