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The GOP has lost it

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So here are Tribes thoughts 

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, said Michigan lawmakers visiting the White House on Friday could be walking into an illegal meeting.

"I am worried that any lawmakers who attend this ridiculous meet and greet are really attending a conspiratorial meeting to steal the election," Tribe told CNN's Erin Burnett. "There's no question that the meeting that is being held is illegal. There is no question that it really is designed quite corruptly to take away people's right to vote."

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2 minutes ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

The Nazis were elected, but used a criminal, mafia like, arm that immediately became a secret police force to gain power. They used a Presidential decree to suspend rights, not lawyers, and their thugs to quickly take advantage by persecuting the opposition.

This is how they ultimately consolidated power, but ignores how they came to prominence. First, their stormtroopers were roughing up commies before they ever gained power. And yes, they gained power through elections. I don't need a 7th grad history lesson. But as Hans Litten will tell you, or would tell you if he hadn't killed himself in a concentration camp, Nazi sympathizers had filled the judiciary in the early years before Hitler became chancellor. So things like murdering commies became harder to prosecute, which helped set in place an atmosphere of fear.

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5 minutes ago, sactowndog said:

So here are Tribes thoughts 

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, said Michigan lawmakers visiting the White House on Friday could be walking into an illegal meeting.

"I am worried that any lawmakers who attend this ridiculous meet and greet are really attending a conspiratorial meeting to steal the election," Tribe told CNN's Erin Burnett. "There's no question that the meeting that is being held is illegal. There is no question that it really is designed quite corruptly to take away people's right to vote."

Michigan's attorney general has obliquely indicated she may investigate them for this.

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1 hour ago, sactowndog said:

So do you consider lobbying the legislature to over-ride the will of the voters and seat their own slate of electors a lawful option? 

Its going over the line the shouldn't be crossed. The GOP leadership McConell, Rubio, Graham, etc. McCarthy  need to come forward and denounce all of this, and publicly wish DJT well post presidency, and congratulate Biden, and say they look forward to the next four years. Trump has been given time to show there was fraud and he has failed. I have expressed these thoughts in my family as well and now I have family members that won't talk to me. I suspect this is happening in a lot of families. I find it ironic that the president of "law & order" is trying to subvert the law and overturn an election. 

Also, to be completely fair,  the Democrats tried this same bullshit tactic of pressuring electors to go against the will of the voters in their states in 2016. Then they invented a phony scandal based on a phony dossier to try to undo a legal and valid election, and dragged the country through that bullshit for 3 1/2 years. The Democrats are just as dirty as Trump is being right now, I don't like their phony piousness. 

I am a Republican, I supported Trump, and I liked a lot of what he accomplished.  The Republican party really needed someone like Trump at the time. We were a party of stale, stuffy, boring uninspiring, stuffed suits (Jeb Bush, McCain, Romney)  that Hillary would have defeated. I believe Trump has left the GOP in a better position to go forward better than what it was in 2016. That can all be thrown out the window if current GOP leadership doesn't grow a spine and take control of this. 

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20 minutes ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

The Nazis were elected, but used a criminal, mafia like, arm that immediately became a secret police force to gain power. They used a Presidential decree to suspend rights, not lawyers, and their thugs to quickly take advantage by persecuting the opposition.

You don't think something at least analogous to other totalitarian power grabs could have happened under COVID if Trump recognized that it's easier to use emergency powers when there's a real national emergency?

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Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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I gotta be honest, I think I may be coming down with a bad case of TDS. Before the vote I was just kinda hoping Trump would fade into the ether, but after these two weeks I'm hoping he does time. The damage he is doing, not just to the Republican party but to a handful of our country's core principles, will take years to heal.

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3 minutes ago, bornontheblue said:

Its going over the line the shouldn't be crossed. The GOP leadership McConell, Rubio, Graham, etc. McCarthy  need to come forward and denounce all of this, and publicly wish DJT well post presidency, and congratulate Biden, and say they look forward to the next four years. Trump has been given time to show there was fraud and he has failed. I have expressed these thoughts in my family as well and now I have family members that won't talk to me. I suspect this is happening in a lot of families. I find it ironic that the president of "law & order" is trying to subvert the law and overturn an election. 

Also, to be completely fair,  the Democrats tried this same bullshit tactic of pressuring electors to go against the will of the voters in their states in 2016. Then they invented a phony scandal based on a phony dossier to try to undo a legal and valid election, and dragged the country through that bullshit for 3 1/2 years. The Democrats are just as dirty as Trump is being right now, I don't like their phony piousness. 

I am a Republican, I supported Trump, and I liked a lot of what he accomplished.  The Republican party really needed someone like Trump at the time. We were a party of stale, stuffy, boring uninspiring, stuffed suits (Jeb Bush, McCain, Romney)  that Hillary would have defeated. I believe Trump has left the GOP in a better position to go forward than what it was in 2016. That can all be thrown out the window if current GOP leadership doesn't grow a spine and take control of this. 

I disagree with a lot of this, but appreciate what you said up top. 

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Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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3 minutes ago, toonkee said:

Read the tweet thread. 

Basically Norton suggests Trump is attempting to bluff his hand best he can to negotiate a better outcome for him. It's what always what Trump does. 

Does this make you want to Rounders right now, or never watch it again?

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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9 minutes ago, bornontheblue said:

Its going over the line the shouldn't be crossed. The GOP leadership McConell, Rubio, Graham, etc. McCarthy  need to come forward and denounce all of this, and publicly wish DJT well post presidency, and congratulate Biden, and say they look forward to the next four years. Trump has been given time to show there was fraud and he has failed. I have expressed these thoughts in my family as well and now I have family members that won't talk to me. I suspect this is happening in a lot of families. I find it ironic that the president of "law & order" is trying to subvert the law and overturn an election. 

Also, to be completely fair,  the Democrats tried this same bullshit tactic of pressuring electors to go against the will of the voters in their states in 2016. Then they invented a phony scandal based on a phony dossier to try to undo a legal and valid election, and dragged the country through that bullshit for 3 1/2 years. The Democrats are just as dirty as Trump is being right now, I don't like their phony piousness. 

I am a Republican, I supported Trump, and I liked a lot of what he accomplished.  The Republican party really needed someone like Trump at the time. We were a party of stale, stuffy, boring uninspiring, stuffed suits (Jeb Bush, McCain, Romney)  that Hillary would have defeated. I believe Trump has left the GOP in a better position to go forward than what it was in 2016. That can all be thrown out the window if current GOP leadership doesn't grow a spine and take control of this. 

To be completely fair, this is wrong and is the typical false equivalence bullshit used to justify Trump's awfulness. Glad you're not all in on this election fraud nonsense but who gives a shit about the GOP winning? You should be in it for a America. The RNC is the one peddling this. F them to hell.

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18 minutes ago, madmartigan said:

This sounds arousing, can you expound? 

lol

in all seriousness, that sort of thing wasn't really talked about much in my house growing up.  the only people i heard it from were people who were really animated by and interested in fringe theories and prophecies that turned the world upside down.

as such, i dismissed them.  humans have always been really animated by end of world prophecies and doom cults.  seems like every few years we've got people thinking "this is it, this is the apocalypse, this is the return of Jesus, this is the end of the world" and the world keeps on turning.  the sentiment that the world is ending is cut from the same fabric of "kids these days" and "back in my day x was way better"

all the same, stuff's different these days and governments don't last forever.  civilization has collapsed multiple times in the past and it's possible it'd happen again.  so i don't know.

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19 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

I think luck is a lot of it. I do think it's fair to point out that there's still a good chance the institutions hold against a more competent authoritarian, especially since the competent authoritarian would very likely have less of a rabid following than Trump. And installation of a kind of authoritarian state in this system requires a large, rabid following and slavish devotion from that following in the electorate and at the federal, state and local levels of power. Trump was able to gin up the devotion much more than I thought he would, which is the most concerning part of this. How would the institutions hold up under those circumstances if the guy with the devoted following has more competence?

 But the luck part of all this is that his devotion was built on the thing that defines his political career more than his ego - the fact that he is an agent of chaos. And you know what's interesting... I've read some people who have suggested that one of the things that the populace has developed in the 21st century with all the ads and the media and the social media and the reality shows and all the simulacra is a weird, keen intuition for sensing authenticity. I know that sounds crazy, but people have collective bullshit detectors that are as sharp as ever. And his followers intuitively knew him to be authentic about two things - his promise to be fully devoted to the religious right as long as they were devoted to him, and his effectiveness at being an agent of chaos in Washington. And remember - that's really why he won. People wanted to "shake things up" because Washington wasn't "working for them" or whatever. People knew he had a nose for chaos, for divisiveness. They could smell it on him. No one in the GOP had anything like that before. 

Whether it's due to laziness or being stupid or whatever, that nose for chaos both makes him uniquely popular with disaffected white voters (and yes, despite very small inroads in some minority populations, it's white voters who are least impacted by chaos in the statehouses) and uniquely incapable of pursuing any real, comprehensive authoritarian agenda. Maggie Haberman has said over and over about him that people need to stop assuming there's ever any real strategy or plan... one of the main things that drives his actions is the fact that he likes to just throw something out there, do something kinda nuts, and just see what happens. See how it plays out. Watch the spectacle he creates. It's like stirring up an ant hill or a hornets nest and standing back to see what it looks like. I think that serves his ego in a lot of ways... creating a national spectacle is a power and an ego boost in and of itself.

So you're right that it has a lot to do with ego, but also with a particular kind of combination of ego and lack of patience or will or discipline or knowledge. Even when the road map is right in front of you. Use a national crisis, real or imagined, to consolidate power. Only after you've consolidated the power do you move on to the stage where you deny any problems or crises, as they would threaten your own power. You only have to read a few books to see that. And dude really hasn't read even a few books. But how many charismatic malevolent spirits are out there right now, looking at his failures, armed with the knowledge of how to do it right? That last question may be alarmist. But I dunno any more. 

Good (and long-winded) points, and smart questions. I guess to sum it up, I would say that an optimistic man can look at what has happened and take heart in just how tight the needle is to pull something like this off in our system. The pessimist looks at it and worries that there is a needle to thread at all.

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2 minutes ago, toonkee said:

The latter. Not a big Norton fan, actually. 

I find him to be fine, but people love him. He's great in Am History X and in Primal Fear.

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Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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2 minutes ago, NVGiant said:

Good (and long-winded) points, and smart questions. I guess to sum it up, I would say that an optimistic man can look at what has happened and take heart in just how tight the needle is to pull something like this off in our system. The pessimist looks at it and worries that there is a needle to thread at all.

Culture of fear, indeed. 

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Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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11 minutes ago, bornontheblue said:

Its going over the line the shouldn't be crossed. The GOP leadership McConell, Rubio, Graham, etc. McCarthy  need to come forward and denounce all of this, and publicly wish DJT well post presidency, and congratulate Biden, and say they look forward to the next four years. Trump has been given time to show there was fraud and he has failed. I have expressed these thoughts in my family as well and now I have family members that won't talk to me. I suspect this is happening in a lot of families. I find it ironic that the president of "law & order" is trying to subvert the law and overturn an election. 

Also, to be completely fair,  the Democrats tried this same bullshit tactic of pressuring electors to go against the will of the voters in their states in 2016. Then they invented a phony scandal based on a phony dossier to try to undo a legal and valid election, and dragged the country through that bullshit for 3 1/2 years. The Democrats are just as dirty as Trump is being right now, I don't like their phony piousness. 

I am a Republican, I supported Trump, and I liked a lot of what he accomplished.  The Republican party really needed someone like Trump at the time. We were a party of stale, stuffy, boring uninspiring, stuffed suits (Jeb Bush, McCain, Romney)  that Hillary would have defeated. I believe Trump has left the GOP in a better position to go forward better than what it was in 2016. That can all be thrown out the window if current GOP leadership doesn't grow a spine and take control of this. 

Yep, I'm going to have to agree this circus is getting out of hand.

Recounts and court challenges regarding changing standards, I was ok with that, to a point.

 But you can't allege some massive global conspiracy without some evidence to make that claim credible.  If there is some shoe to drop that makes me eat my words, I'll be the first to say I was wrong.  But the time to wrap this up was when GA finished its recount and he still lost.

Its now past time to shut this down.

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23 minutes ago, NVGiant said:

This is how they ultimately consolidated power, but ignores how they came to prominence. First, their stormtroopers were roughing up commies before they ever gained power. And yes, they gained power through elections. I don't need a 7th grad history lesson. But as Hans Litten will tell you, or would tell you if he hadn't killed himself in a concentration camp, Nazi sympathizers had filled the judiciary in the early years before Hitler became chancellor. So things like murdering commies became harder to prosecute, which helped set in place an atmosphere of fear.

The judges Trump has appointed are not Trump sympathizers. That’s one of the great ironies of the age of Trump. One of the things he’s most proud of is his appointment of judges from the conservative establishment he overthrew.

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We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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15 minutes ago, bornontheblue said:

Its going over the line the shouldn't be crossed. The GOP leadership McConell, Rubio, Graham, etc. McCarthy  need to come forward and denounce all of this, and publicly wish DJT well post presidency, and congratulate Biden, and say they look forward to the next four years. Trump has been given time to show there was fraud and he has failed. I have expressed these thoughts in my family as well and now I have family members that won't talk to me. I suspect this is happening in a lot of families. I find it ironic that the president of "law & order" is trying to subvert the law and overturn an election. 

Also, to be completely fair,  the Democrats tried this same bullshit tactic of pressuring electors to go against the will of the voters in their states in 2016. Then they invented a phony scandal based on a phony dossier to try to undo a legal and valid election, and dragged the country through that bullshit for 3 1/2 years. The Democrats are just as dirty as Trump is being right now, I don't like their phony piousness. 

I am a Republican, I supported Trump, and I liked a lot of what he accomplished.  The Republican party really needed someone like Trump at the time. We were a party of stale, stuffy, boring uninspiring, stuffed suits (Jeb Bush, McCain, Romney)  that Hillary would have defeated. I believe Trump has left the GOP in a better position to go forward better than what it was in 2016. That can all be thrown out the window if current GOP leadership doesn't grow a spine and take control of this. 

Individual faithless electors is different than the president of the united states directing the power of the presidency at systematically overturning the vote.

 

Neither should exist bc presidency should just be raw popular vote but republicans will never acquiesce to that for obvious reasons.

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2 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

I find him to be fine, but people love him. He's great in Am History X and in Primal Fear.

And Fight Club. And Rounders. And the 25th Hour.

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We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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