Octopus Overlords

Jaymann wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:17 pm Sure you can ask, but on what conceivable authority can he force a state to stop counting votes?

malchior wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:02 pm A taste of the next three months.

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1306380359647612928

malchior wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 5:57 pm This totally makes sense.

Football games - outdoors - safe
Tailgating* - outdoors - not safe
Lines to vote - could be outdoors - but somehow dangerous
Voting - indoors - *impossible to do safely obviously * so clearly dangerous
Shuttle to downtown voting location - safe

https://twitter.com/universityofga/stat ... 5467206656

*Not an exception to the tailgating policy - "Therefore, fans will be allowed to gather near their vehicle with family members or those with whom they traveled and plan to sit with in the stadium."

Grifman wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:25 pm I am afraid that this is where we are now. The Trump Party (I will no longer call them Republicans) have decided that losing is no longer an acceptable outcome and will do almost whatever it can do to achieve "victory".

I am saddened and ashamed to be living in this country right now. I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime.

Holman wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:29 pm

malchior wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 5:57 pm This totally makes sense.

Football games - outdoors - safe
Tailgating* - outdoors - not safe
Lines to vote - could be outdoors - but somehow dangerous
Voting - indoors - *impossible to do safely obviously * so clearly dangerous
Shuttle to downtown voting location - safe

https://twitter.com/universityofga/stat ... 5467206656

*Not an exception to the tailgating policy - "Therefore, fans will be allowed to gather near their vehicle with family members or those with whom they traveled and plan to sit with in the stadium."

The Georgia GOP is packed to the rafters with UGA alumni.

I'm pretty sure we know who "determined" this policy.

Grifman wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:25 pm It's all a part of a strategy:

https://www.thenation.com/article/polit ... ppression/

The fact is, our republic, indeed any representative government, relies more than just on the law. It relies on norms of conduct that cannot be codified, expectations that there are unspoken "rules" and traditions, that everyone knows and has agreed to play by. As we have seen in Hungry, Poland, and now seemingly so in the US, when one party decides norms no longer apply to it, that it is free to win at all costs, to push as hard as it can at the limits of the law no matter the consequences for the republic as a whole, then representative government will inevitably collapse. I am afraid that this is where we are now. The Trump Party (I will no longer call them Republicans) have decided that losing is no longer an acceptable outcome and will do almost whatever it can do to achieve "victory".

I am saddened and ashamed to be living in this country right now. I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime.

LordMortis wrote:Due to concerns of spreading the contamination at an indoor venue, we are implementing that students to not all come to crowd this one place but rather leave campus in a crowded shuttle and go crowd lots of different places.

LordMortis wrote: Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:57 am

I think it was Unagi who said he was thinking about uprooting to another country. For the first time in life, I have seriously wondered what it means, what it takes to become expatriated and where it would be reasonable to move and how, quite frankly, I could still get benefits I spent a lifetime paying into.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Sep 17, 2020 10:53 am I have a friend that confided in me that he's considering taking jobs in either the EU or Canada depending on what shakes out in November - relocating his entire family in the process. I'm not gonna lie, the thought has crossed my mind as well - which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever write. Chances are low given my family connections here, but the idea that it would even be on the table is frightening to me.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Sep 17, 2020 10:53 am I have a friend that confided in me that he's considering taking jobs in either the EU or Canada depending on what shakes out in November - relocating his entire family in the process. I'm not gonna lie, the thought has crossed my mind as well - which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever write. Chances are low given my family connections here, but the idea that it would even be on the table is frightening to me.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Sep 17, 2020 10:53 am I have a friend that confided in me that he's considering taking jobs in either the EU or Canada depending on what shakes out in November - relocating his entire family in the process. I'm not gonna lie, the thought has crossed my mind as well - which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever write. Chances are low given my family connections here, but the idea that it would even be on the table is frightening to me.

coopasonic wrote: Thu Sep 17, 2020 3:34 pm

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Sep 17, 2020 10:53 am I have a friend that confided in me that he's considering taking jobs in either the EU or Canada depending on what shakes out in November - relocating his entire family in the process. I'm not gonna lie, the thought has crossed my mind as well - which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever write. Chances are low given my family connections here, but the idea that it would even be on the table is frightening to me.

My older brother and his kids are German citizens and I took some German in college. I think I would have to take up drinking again if I moved to Germany. Access to snowboarding and no damn beaches. My wife would want to move to a place with beaches though. One of my best friends moved to Mexico (near Mérida in the Yucatan) a couple years ago and they are loving it. Oh, I also took Spanish in high school and remember a LOT more of that than German (it's a bit more useful in Texas).

Alefroth wrote: Thu Sep 17, 2020 3:52 pm My mother was born in Montreal before 1947, so I'm a Canadian citizen by descent. I'm in the process of getting my citizenship certificate now. Hopefully that will open doors in other commonwealth countries.

CHICAGO — A host of postal workers, community leaders and concerned citizens gathered for a prayer vigil Thursday at the spot where a letter carrier was inexplicably shot in Burnside last week.

...
Union leaders say letter carriers will refuse to deliver mail if they don’t feel safe, and they’re warning that entire neighborhoods could lose mail service due to fear of gang conflicts across the city.

Trump Supporters continue to protest at the #EarlyVoteVA site in Fairfax VA. They have to move voters inside because they are blocking the site for voters. As you can see here they are blocking the entrance to the voting site.

Update: Most of the #MAGA Supporters cleared out when extra security came to monitor the voting site.

There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb. They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not. Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path.

The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord. Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted. The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery.

...

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.

Trump’s state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states. Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice. The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president’s term in office “shall end” at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in. One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.


“We are not prepared for this at all,” Julian Zelizer, a Prince­ton professor of history and public affairs, told me. “We talk about it, some worry about it, and we imagine what it would be. But few people have actual answers to what happens if the machinery of democracy is used to prevent a legitimate resolution to the election.”

...

Let us not hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstance. Not during the Interregnum and not afterward. If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.

Trump’s invincible commitment to this stance will be the most important fact about the coming Interregnum. It will deform the proceedings from beginning to end. We have not experienced anything like it before.

Maybe you hesitate. Is it a fact that if Trump loses, he will reject defeat, come what may? Do we know that? Technically, you feel obliged to point out, the proposition is framed in the future conditional, and prophecy is no man’s gift, and so forth. With all due respect, that is pettifoggery. We know this man. We cannot afford to pretend.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:42 am What is the reason for his determination to hold on the the presidency? Just ego or is he afraid of what happens when he doesn't (prosecution, revelations)?

I mean it seems like it would just be more desirable for him ride off with his ill-gotten gains and new fan base and do whatever he wants. Surely he'd rather golf twice as much and get back to grabbin' pussy.

But there has to be a reason and I can't believe it's just ego. And a reason for the GOP to support this.

noxiousdog wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:43 am

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:42 am What is the reason for his determination to hold on the the presidency? Just ego or is he afraid of what happens when he doesn't (prosecution, revelations)?

I mean it seems like it would just be more desirable for him ride off with his ill-gotten gains and new fan base and do whatever he wants. Surely he'd rather golf twice as much and get back to grabbin' pussy.

But there has to be a reason and I can't believe it's just ego. And a reason for the GOP to support this.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:42 am What is the reason for his determination to hold on the the presidency? Just ego or is he afraid of what happens when he doesn't (prosecution, revelations)?

I mean it seems like if he loses, it would just be more desirable for him ride off with his ill-gotten gains and new fan base and do whatever he wants. Surely he'd rather golf twice as much and get back to grabbin' pussy.

But there has to be a reason and I can't believe it's just ego. And a reason for the GOP to support this.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:42 am What is the reason for his determination to hold on the the presidency? Just ego or is he afraid of what happens when he doesn't (prosecution, revelations)?

I mean it seems like if he loses, it would just be more desirable for him ride off with his ill-gotten gains and new fan base and do whatever he wants. Surely he'd rather golf twice as much and get back to grabbin' pussy.

But there has to be a reason and I can't believe it's just ego. And a reason for the GOP to support this.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:45 am

noxiousdog wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:43 am

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:42 am What is the reason for his determination to hold on the the presidency? Just ego or is he afraid of what happens when he doesn't (prosecution, revelations)?

I mean it seems like it would just be more desirable for him ride off with his ill-gotten gains and new fan base and do whatever he wants. Surely he'd rather golf twice as much and get back to grabbin' pussy.

But there has to be a reason and I can't believe it's just ego. And a reason for the GOP to support this.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

It's a lot easier to steal $ when you're not under the microscope of the presidency.

OTOH it's much easier to steal $ for someone/everyone else when you're in the presidency.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:42 am What is the reason for his determination to hold on the the presidency? Just ego or is he afraid of what happens when he doesn't (prosecution, revelations)?

malchior wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:18 am Scariest read of the day.

The Atlantic

We are accustomed to choosing electors by popular vote, but nothing in the Constitution says it has to be that way. Article II provides that each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Since the late 19th century, every state has ceded the decision to its voters. Even so, the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that a state “can take back the power to appoint electors.” How and when a state might do so has not been tested for well over a century.

Trump may test this. According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.

To a modern democratic sensibility, discarding the popular vote for partisan gain looks uncomfortably like a coup, whatever license may be found for it in law. Would Republicans find that position disturbing enough to resist? Would they cede the election before resorting to such a ploy? Trump’s base would exact a high price for that betrayal, and by this point party officials would be invested in a narrative of fraud.

The Trump-campaign legal adviser I spoke with told me the push to appoint electors would be framed in terms of protecting the people’s will. Once committed to the position that the overtime count has been rigged, the adviser said, state lawmakers will want to judge for themselves what the voters intended.

“The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ” the adviser said. Democrats, he added, have exposed themselves to this stratagem by creating the conditions for a lengthy overtime.

“If you have this notion,” the adviser said, “that ballots can come in for I don’t know how many days—in some states a week, 10 days—then that onslaught of ballots just gets pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. So pick your poison. Is it worse to have electors named by legislators or to have votes received by Election Day?”

Unagi wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 7:23 pm I kinda wish they would stop talking about it and helping it be normalized at all.

If he does it, let that be a shock to Everyone... don't let them sit here and prepare for it publicly.

IMO.