There are something like 75,000 federal thugs. 20,000 in that crazy border patrol unit and they have a $5B budget.
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If worse comes to worse and Trump declares that he’s the victim of a coup and calls for law enforcement across the country to come to his aid and put down the insurrection, do we have any doubt after the last couple months that a significant portion of law enforcement would do so? Local cops, sherriffs, highway patrol, border patrol, ICE, etc. All of them with a shitload of guns and none of them too fond, as a general rule, of liberal snowflakes.
And then we have a situation where hundreds of thousands of armed people think the rightful, legitimate leader of this country and head of the executive branch is X, while hundreds of thousands of other armed people think it is Y.
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That does feel like what they’re hoping for. Sending in goons to beat up protesters and then having right-wing media lie about the situation (to create fictions about riots, violent protesters and cities in flame) only goes so far.
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While I think the chance of the election actually being delayed is vanishingly small, and likewise the chance that the military and the USSS would follow him if he just refused to leave office, what I do think is likely if he declares the election invalid is a sharp rise in right-wing terrorist violence during the first years of the Biden administration.
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I feel like the world is his dreary grievance really, we just live in it.
As for the tweet, I thought of some possibilites:
- “Made-ya-look” (again)
- Trump is wholly unfamiliar with the United States Code (to say nothing of the Constitution)
- Both
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- Breaking the law.
It is what he does best.
"The Constitution was written based on the principle that we are a nation of laws and yet, Trump has worked ceaselessly to undermine the rule of law in the United States. It is was drafted to ensure that no American is above the law — and yet Trump and his abettors, like Attorney General William Barr and the GOP leadership in the Senate, have worked to ensure that Trump is.
Even the casual observer must conclude that Trump has, with impunity, broken campaign finance laws, tax laws, laws against the abuse of women. It is not an aberration for him. It is what he does. It is who he is." -USAToday (D. Rothkopf)
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I don’t disagree, but again, they have to survive the virus first.
At the rate things are going, many people “on both sides” won’t be here, come November… let alone come January 2021.
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Everyone taking about why they aren’t going to vote for Trump is a pretty good start.
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I suspect Vlad’s instructions went something like this:
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Establish the need for having federal not-really-troops in large cities, especially such as in battleground states like Michigan, Ohio, and maybe Wisconsin.
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Try to prevent absentee/mail-in ballets. You can “cave in” later on and allow mail-in ballets for Rural areas, because those people may need to travel miles to get to the poles, which is an extraordinary hardship right now with the pandemic at records levels, so they can be allowed to mail in. But make sure you establish tight control over the post office so that you can delay mail in some locations. Urban areas of course have no excuse and not be allowed to use mail-in ballots.
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Claim to “delay” the election. Talk about out it a lot like it’s a done deal and it’s official to that as many people as possible hear about the extra time. They are used to that because many states delayed things like Tax deadlines, drivers license expirations etc.
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Later on, change you mind about a complete delay, and say, it’s only those cities, in which the not-really-troops are present, battling protesters that need to be delayed. Everywhere else (rural areas) can vote on the normal schedule after all.
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Have those not-really-troops enforce the “delay” in the affected areas, sending people home, curfews, reduce the number of open poling places because of the pandemic, etc, but claim you don’t know anything about that, you don’t take responsibility, etc.
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On Nov 4, make it clear that of course the elections had not actually been delayed. You never said anything like that, and wouldn’t have the power to do it anyway. Anyone who failed to vote on time… their fault. Including those who dropped their ballots in the mail in early October, which sat in the bins at the post-office waiting to be processed because of the election “delay”, and did not get processed in time.
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Good idea to have the instructions in English.
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My Not Republican Any More spouse is also salivating over the thought of Trump’s complete and utter humiliation- and hopefully the same for every single one of the Idiots enablers too. He said the only thing that will sink in with Trumps followers is their messiah’s complete defeat. I think he’s still being optimistic about anything sinking in.
One thing he and I are both worried / wondering about is deprogramming people afterwards. First things first though! Gotta get rid of this evil clown…
Yes, and that definitive NO may end up being what saves us.
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Jeez, that graph filled up my doomscrolling quota for the next month.
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Only after he’s been put in a pillory for 30 days!
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Putin is pimping trump out like a 2 dollar prostitute. When Congress made trump sign those sanctions you could see in his face the fear of Putins pimp hand soon to come.
Which ones do you think will cease to exist, and why?
To me that sounds an awful lot like what the Alt-Right would say.
FWIW: There‘s also a proposal for a solution:
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1288900479062286341?s=20
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1288901154592772097?s=20
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1288902046108782593?s=20
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The wildest thing about this image is that there are at least three more levels of barrier around the White House today than there was during the Civil War, when an entire hostile Army was within walking distance of Washington D.C.
Know who didn’t have a bunker designed to withstand a direct nuclear attack? Abraham Lincoln.
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What I find amusing is “Not many people know this…” to introduce a fact that anybody that was paying attention learned in 8th grade.
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If you take the sentence out of the context of everything else in what I’ve quoted, then sure. If you look at the paragraphs as a whole, not so much. The words of that commenter are what inspired me to write this about a week ago.
In regards to the proposal for a solution: It’s a good proposal. But unfortunately the assholes have shown that they don’t give a fuck and will go low whenever we go high and I have little confidence that enough of the sort of academic and legal work with the Constitutional law experts and election law experts will be able to get done in time due to the pandemic. Or if it’ll even matter at all, given how many times the Constitution has been openly used as toilet paper by the GOP over the last 20-30 years.
