Eighteen states, with Texas in the lead, are suing Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan to invalidate their election results. Donald Trump is intervening as a private citizen who ran for office and was treated very, very badly. Documents are here.
The eighteen will all send their votes for Trump to the electoral college next week. The states’ attorneys general are Republicans licking Trump’s boots.
They are, of course, following Trump’s action plan: take his election loss to the Supreme Court and ask them to emplace him on the throne. It’s why, as Trump has told us, he appointed Amy Covid Barrett.
From what I see of Legal Twitter, the documents are trash. But will the Trumpy Supremes do his bidding? Probably not, say Legal Twitter, but who knows these days.
This is one more reason that we can’t let bygones be bygones, that we must insist on consequences for actions during Trump’s reign of division. Every lawyer involved in this suit should be disbarred for life.
Some informative tweets:
Long thread attached to this one, but this is the meat of it so far as I am concerned at the moment:
Open thread.
debbie
I am clearly no lawyer, but if the SC refused to hear that case a couple of days ago, they will most likely refuse this one too.
Also, blanket disbarment for all of them and all of Trump’s legal team. You’re ALL fired
ETA: I’m surprised and relieved that Ohio isn’t included in the 17. Yost is a major league asshole.
zzyzx
I’m amused to see Reason mocking the case this hard:
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/12/09/more-on-statistical-stupidity-at-scotus
Frankensteinbeck
To add to the patheticness, those 16 states throwing in aren’t even claiming they support the case. They’re just asking the court to hear it. It’s utter moral cowardice.
Barbara
They are complaining about electoral practices that many of the complaining states also use. For instance, counting ballots received after election day. No one has ever thought that one state should be able to micromanage the election policies of any other state. This is taking us to a very dark place.
@debbie: Most likely, yes.
LuciaMia
‘Sore Losers’ is being extremely charitable. ‘Shameless Monsters’ is more like it.
Mokum
@zzyzx: Hilarious, indeed.
Humdog
There is no pretty way to resolve this. Continued union seems impossible, disunion impossible, MAGATs repenting and changing their ways impossible.
BruceFromOhio
@debbie: Yost is an asshole, but he isn’t stupid. This goes nowhere, and he doesn’t get that little asterisk next to his name.
HypersphericalCow
Like I just Sid over at LGM, one of the most damaging effects of this regime is that it’s impossible to tell whether people are acting in good faith or not.
talking about Z-scores and factors of quadrillion is so bizarre, I dont know if the people making these claims believe them or not.
Mike in NC
The title of Kathleen Parker’s op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday: “It’s time for the brat in the White House to make his great escape”. Pretty brutal and it would be funny if Trump wasn’t such a goddamn malignant narcissist.
dmsilev
Apparently, according to the noted experts in probabilistic analysis over in the Trump campaign, the odds of Joe Biden winning all four of the allegedly-contested states were “1 in a quadrillion to the fourth power”.
This analysis, which you can tell is totally legit because a guy with “PhD” after his name said so, is based on saying that because Donald Trump did well with people who voted on Election Day, it is statistically certain that he did equally well among people who voted by mail and hence whose votes were counted later in the evening.
West of the Rockies
@Frankensteinbeck:
I wouldn’t mind seeing a block of blue states declare they won’t do business with that group of red state traitors. THERE HAVE TO BE REPERCUSSIONS!
West of the Rockies
@LuciaMia:
I find language fails in truly, properly describing Trump and his cultists. Superlatives fail. The center cannot hold. (Where is Yeats when you need him?)
Cheryl Rofer
debbie
Tell me all their votes were for Trump anyway and that they’re not not following the voters’ will.
debbie
@BruceFromOhio:
Oh, he gets that asterisk in my mind, believe me.
BruceFromOhio
Yup, death threats, showing up at your house with guns, these are some fine Americans representing the Republican Party. For everyone not a gun-toting anti-masker, take note: when they run out of targets in their own party, they’ll be looking for a new cause to be angry about. And the dumpster fire has a cash haul that will keep him in the grifting business until he finally strokes out. This is not a happy set of circumstances. Putins desire for civil war in America proceeds apace. I’m curious what the national response will be when the MAGAts in, let’s say Iowa, finally get organized enough to start mowing down their fellow citizens en masse.
SiubhanDuinne
What actually is the threshold for disbarment? As a proud member of the IANAL brigade, I admit I have no idea, but I’d cheerfully throw all of Trump’s lawyers and all these state AGs to the wolves if I could.
eddie blake
this is seriously making me furious. fuck these people indeed. this complete indifference to peaceful transition as the fundamental aspect of our country when you fucking lose, coupled with the fact that we completely outnumber those fascist fucks is igniting a seething rage.
i am SO not down with making nice. i’m for crushing them, seeing them driven before us and hearing the lamentations of the covid barrett.
debbie
@Mike in NC:
I’m genuinely shocked. When did she go rogue?
MJS
@Humdog: This ends when Trump dies or otherwise removes himself from the political arena. There is no one MAGATs will coalesce around to replace him. While the typical Republican bullshit will continue, this is driven primarily by the cult of Trump. Note there have been no similar efforts on behalf off losing Republican Senate candidates.
debbie
@West of the Rockies:
It would have more of an impact if they cut off tax payments to the government.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I’m suing the Dodgers asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the World Series.
I’m also calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Halle Berry’s (photo) decision not accompany me to my senior prom.
BruceFromOhio
@debbie: Well, sure, mine too, but for reasons that differ from signing on with the fascist bootlickers.
Cheryl Rofer
@debbie: The votes were indeed for Trump.
scav
Universities might need to develop a special testing regime to confirm basic numeracy, logic and civics from applicants from those O! so represented! bastions of white-bread whininess.
ETA. Also would very much like a photo lineup of all the brave brave officials participating in this bullshit-flinging.
debbie
I’m wondering if Trump’s beginning to doubt his own geniusness about his plan to subvert the election. It doesn’t seem to have been successful. //
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thanks. That is what is worrying me most at the moment.
dmsilev
Some Blue states should file a counter-suit claiming that these 18 states, by supposedly electing Republicans as Senators, have deprived the Blue states of their rightful representation and voice in national politics, and the Court should immediately void the election of however many Republican Senators were elected this term from those states. And Congressional Representatives as well. And State reps. And dogcatchers.
dmsilev
More seriously, this should be used as a way to dismiss the credibility of any state AG or other lawyer signing on to this case. Call it the “you bloody idiot, go screw yourself” legal doctrine, or whatever that might end up being in Latin.
sab
Cheryl Rofer: Thank you for this post and especially for attaching the documents.
Thank God Ohio wasn’t among the amici.
rikyrah
@eddie blake:
Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap.
Spanky
I can’t see SCOTUS voting to make themselves irrelevant in a dictatorship.
Frankensteinbeck
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Statistics show that Halle Berry granted every other request you ever made to her, so it’s simply impossible she could legitimately have refused this one.
catclub
in 2000 and 2004 there were motions by Democratic reps to object to the vote in Ohio and Florida ( I think).
But they got zero support from Democratic senators, which is required for the debate to begin on the issue.
The rubber will hit the road about jan 6 when GOP reps make the same argument and look for GOP senators to confirm their motions.
Marmot
What was stopping a losing candidate from doing this before? Seriously, why are the vaunted structures of our democracy held up by goodwill and shucks-we-always-done-it-this-way? Aren’t there consequences? What about all that talk of equality before the law? I can’t get away with this shit!
germy
catclub
@dmsilev: I bet they all signed onto the ACA is unconstitutional because reasons case. So… another litmus test for idiocy.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
Trump? Doubt? Unpossible!
The Moar You Know
@Humdog: In two sentences, you have perfectly stated the problem. How do we fix it? I have no fucking idea.
germy
Eliza Rose Watson has shown no indication she will tuck me in tonight.
I’m taking this to the Supreme Court.
geg6
@SiubhanDuinne:
Gotta agree with that. Not gonna happen that he doubts. He can never acknowledge that. It would be an existential crisis for a narcissist like him.
LurkerNoLonger
Oh great! Trump can lose on a bigger stage! Another win for Biden/Harris! I’m still not tired of all the winning.
Yutsano
I’m honestly shocked Kentucky isn’t. They have a very ambitious AG who would love to ingratiate himself among the MAGATs. Unfortunately he’s a little melanin challenged for them so…
germy
piratedan
seems to me that this can all be settled with a simple multiple choice question for these folks:
a) stfu
b) exile
c) martyrdom
pick one
geg6
@germy:
Nothing fishy about this, I’m sure.
mali muso
Honestly, I thought that the past four years had driven me to depths of loathing and rage that I could not plumb further, but I swear that these shenanigans are showing me that there are even greater levels I can sink to. I don’t know how we come back from this.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The ruling they seek is akin to slaver state whining about the inability to consistently enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in the Free States.
It is Dred Scott, in a nutshell, and really fuckkng dangerous – they keep pulling that thread on unraveling civility, and it is getting bad. I had no fewer than three conversations today with people who expressed sentiments that should terrify Mitch McConnell on a personal level.
RSA
@zzyzx: Thanks for the link; good analysis, free of Reason biases.
I have to blame myself, though, in going down the rabbit hole in comments. (Just reading.) I recognize at least one name from more than a decade ago, maybe two, spouting off as if they haven’t learned anything. Sample: Lincoln Republicans are actually Democrats.
LuciaMia
Forget wolves. Into the nearest live volcano!
narya
@MJS: I am beginning to think otherwise. I think someone else will figure out how to repurpose the MAGAtry. There’s a whole RWNJ machine, including foundations and lobbyists and members of congress, and they will want to keep the base, because that’s how they elect their members of congress.
sab
In my city the MAGAts are going local. Our mayor wanted stricter Covid mandates, including restricting the number of guests in a private home to six, with enforcement only if neighbors complain. The police union doesn’t like it (“enforcement would be dangerous for officers”). Now the MAGAts are protesting in front of the homes of the mayor and city council members who supported him.
J R in WV
@piratedan:
Fixed that for you…
Ksmiami
@LuciaMia: we need to destroy the GOP- no fucking mercy. Just fuck them all. Also maybe it is time to think of partitioning the country
Baud
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
No. That case would have merit.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: IANAL basically it’s don’t embezzle money from your clients trust account. Anything else is acceptable these days. Things used to be stricter
ETA: Also, don’t get convicted of a felony.
Calouste
@dmsilev: The university that awarded that PhD should revoke it. “Sorry, our usual high standards weren’t applied during the awarding of this particular PhD. We have to correct that mistake. “
germy
@Ksmiami:
How does one partition a country?
Spanky
@J R in WV: This is like a restaurant that asks you to pick two sides and they’re ALL shitty.
TS (the original)
Over 15 million cases of covid-19, shortly to reach 300,000 deaths but the major concern of the president* is that he lost an election.
Why on earth would anyone expect to win under these circumstances.
sab
@TS (the original): American exceptionalism.
Spanky
@germy: Very messily, especially when the population centers and ag centers are on different sides. See Spain, 1937.
Ohio Mom
Whatever steps Biden’s DOJ takes to address all this won’t be for a while. I don’t think the country can do the pandemic and economy AND Republican rot all at once, and squashing Covid has to come first.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
That photo was the only great feature of an otherwise lousy Bond movie.
Mike in NC
@debbie: Oh, about a week ago.
Ksmiami
@eddie blake: drag them out of DC by head or foot. Every GOP enabler deserves the worst
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ksmiami:
You mean federalism? That would be easier to accomplish if we didn’t have this rural vs urban thing. Plus, to do this more effectively, we’d need to be able to have states form compacts with each other.. share resources and the like.
MJS
@narya: They have to find someone TV famous, not politically famous, flashy rich (or at least phony flashy rich), racist, and willing to deny objective truth and reality. There might be someone out there who meets all of the criteria, but I can’t think of anyone.
Ksmiami
@germy: India and Pakistan did it…
germy
@MJS:
Mark Burnett’s probably working on it as we speak.
kindness
Boy do I feel foolish. I thought the worst thing that would happen when Trump lost would be that the Proud Boys, 3 percenters et al would start shooting people. Little did I realize that the worst thing would end up being the loss of our Republic.
Jeffro
@piratedan: co-signed
Jeffro
@LuciaMia: also co-signed
Ksmiami
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: maybe we just let Covid take care of the rural parts… seems like it’s working on its own
Cacti
For about a month and a half now, the R Party has tried to overturn the result of a democratic election for no reason other than not liking the result.
Most of the media is treating this like it’s some sort of joke.
This is deadly serious shit. One of the major political parties in this country has morphed into a fully anti-democracy political movement. Under such a scenario, I don’t see the United States in its present form as having long to live.
RSA
@dmsilev: Correct. Per @zzyzx’s link, this is apparently the analysis (quoting the Reason article), with additional stupidity:
Patricia Kayden
Meanwhile in Michigan, Republicans are punishing the victim.
TS (the original)
@germy: Check out Korea, Ireland
A Good Woman
@Ksmiami: I agree, burn the GOP down and salt the earth.
This latest SCOTUS episode has me so angry. EC vote is Dec 14, what’s holding up Roberts et al from consigning this to the dust heap of history?
Splitting Image
Roberts will murder any of the reactionaries in cold blood if they sign on to this.
Remember that little story that made the rounds years ago about the time travel organization which spent all of its time trying to explain to the newbies that going back in time to assassinate Hitler would prevent nuclear physics from advancing fast enough to develop time travel? (“Don’t be so hard on them. Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.”)
Roberts at this point is the guy trying to fix all the damage the idiots are causing in their zeal to own the libs. The entire project of supporting corporate rights over those of the hoi polloi depends on the doctrine of state sovereignty, which Roberts and his crew have been spending decades cultivating. If the deep red states are allowed to determine what is and isn’t legal in Michigan or Pennsylvania under state law in those states, then a coalition of large states would be able to decide what is and isn’t legal in South Dakota or Delaware, which would end those states’ ability to be safe havens for the financial industry and other corporations eager to avoid regulation from New York and California.
Which in turn would erase all of the gains made by the conservative movement over the last forty years. All to benefit Donald J. Trump. Not gonna happen.
sab
@Ksmiami: STFU. I live in a blue city (like most cities) in a red state and I have rights too.
Patricia Kayden
coin operated
I have ideas that would make Stephen King take a step back…
Frank Wilhoit
@HypersphericalCow: Occam’s Razor says they don’t.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ksmiami: Don’t be silly. Covid isn’t solving anything. Its making it worse. The unemployed are spending their time at home online reading conspiracy theories. The radical right-wing are getting more radicalized because they actually think Democrats, not the virus, are destroying their businesses and taking away their freedoms.
mrmoshpotato
These fucking assclowns.
You lost! Get over it!
Oh, and fuck your fat, orange, fascist feelings! Apparently you and your trash heap supporters didn’t have the stamina to win. SAD! LOSERS!
I hope the judges throwing out these garbage cases wear that as a badge of honor.
Cacti
Do I think the fascist wing of SCOTUS would be tempted to give their unelected selves the newly found authority to decide which Presidential election results count?
I sure do.
zzyzx
@Splitting Image: https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/
I love this story.
Ksmiami
@Cacti: pandemics often brings empires low… I agree that we are in an end stage moment
LeftCoastYankee
I think a lot of this is preemptive noise making to allow the Republicans still in office to scream “politics” and “bias” about the courts when Trump and his accomplices start getting subpoenaed and charged next year.
It would also be totally on-brand for the Republicans to go through years of scheming to pack the courts in their favor, and then in a few months undermine that completely on behalf of Trump.
Ksmiami
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: a lot of them will die though so I consider that a bonus
Steeplejack
@sab:
I think sex with your client is still right out.
Bill Arnold
@Spanky:
They would be voting themselves dead as key targets in a Civil War. Perhaps along with their families.
(Writing as a pacifist, who’s great great grandfather fought against the Confederacy in The War of the Rebellion.)
Frank Wilhoit
@piratedan: Those are the choices that they have been confronting us with since 1980.
Ksmiami
@sab: me too…but I think this country is beyond saving. There cannot be peaceful coexistence with a subset of deluded thuggish morons that can’t accept an election loss. I’m not sure what the future brings but this isn’t sustainable
NotMax
@Splitting Image
Texas: “Today the textbooks, tomorrow the world!”
//
H.E.Wolf
@West of the Rockies:
@debbie:
Although I know you know this, it bears repeating: Solutions that involve meeting childish petulance with the same will not solve our country’s problems.
I recommend that we channel our energy into helping Stacey Abrams and her colleagues GOTV for Jan. 5th. Let’s do this for Subaru Diane and our other GA jackals!
This household is sending 10 somewhat White-Out-bedazzled postcards to GA today….
sab
@Steeplejack: Is it still? That is heartening.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ksmiami: 1% of people in the rural areas will die. A lot of suburban and city people will die too, because it hard to contain this virus. Rooting for death is just evil, and it solves nothing.
coin operated
@Splitting Image:
Thank you. This is how I thought this would go down, but couldn’t clearly articulate.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cacti:
Get a grip
NotMax
@Ksmiami
“Give it a rest already.”
– Eeyore
germy
Rush should secede from the earth.
Kattails
@TS (the original): If Trump wants to call himself a private citizen then I hope many many people will sue him as such for the unending damage he’s done to them, the sickness, fear, waking up daily with PTSD symptoms, unemployment, destruction of the government that should be relied on and trusted, and so on. If he wants to play this as a private citizen he should get so buried under lawsuits he fucking suffocates.
I’m sick of having to play some idiotic, miserable game the Republicans make up as they go, move the goalposts, invent rules and then tear them up and penalize us when we try to play by them. I lived with this shit for years. THE ONLY WAY you get out of it is to stuff the ball down their throat.
Ksmiami
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I’m not rooting, just doing stats. Rural areas have very finite medical capacity and a lot of ignorant people so….
Geoboy
@Spanky: Regarding the agricultural centers, 1) the single biggest agricultural area domestically is the Central Valley of California, and they’re not going to be sacrificing their livelihoods for Trump’s whackjobs, 2) when Trump tried to show China who had the bigger dick by jacking up the tariffs on soybeans, China just switched their purchases to Brazil. One of the advantages of being a coastal elite is that agricultural products travel just fine on ships.
dmsilev
@Calouste: That’s actually happened, though generally it takes something dramatic. The case I’m familiar with is that of Jan Hendrik Schön, where once his fakeries at Bell Labs came to light his alma mater revoked his PhD. I think there were some allegations that he had similarly faked at least some of the results in his dissertation, though that’s not mentioned in the Wiki article.
(I know a bunch of people who were at least peripherally involved with that mess. It’s a painful subject for a lot of them, so it doesn’t come up in conversation much.)
Frank Wilhoit
@germy: With a total blockade: no persons, no goods, no money, no information in or out.
Ksmiami
@Kattails: exactly- kick them in the junk. The GOP is a goddamn menace
germy
satby
@germy: Soon, grasshopper. It will happen soon.
Ksmiami
@Geoboy: yep…
Suzanne
@dmsilev: I can support that.
There should be social repercussions for these people. I’m understanding that no one wants to be friends with Ivanka or the ferret she married.
sab
@Ksmiami: So they send their sick to the city hospitals.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Thank you.
Frank Wilhoit
@Splitting Image: You seem to think precedents work both ways.
Ksmiami
@NotMax: not until many of these GOP Ags are in GITMO- ps I’m not sure I have any interest in sharing a country with most Republicans- they are truly hideous people
germy
Cacti
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You’re more than welcome to offer a fact based rebuttal.
Meanwhile, in the real world, 27 Congressional Republicans to date have publicly acknowledged Biden as President-elect.
Ksmiami
@sab: where we should turn them away. Too bad you went to Aunt Ellen’s BBQ. No bed for you
NeenerNeener
@MJS: You’re forgetting Fvcker Carlson.
frosty
@germy: 1990s, Yugoslavia. 1947, India and Pakistan. We don’t want to go there. Not only are there neighbors who will be on opposite sides (I would be driven from my house to who knows where?) but there would be marriages on opposite sides.
It wouldn’t be a division along state lines, those would disappear. This would be a bloodbath beyond imagination. India wasn’t armed up in 1947 the way the US is now.
debbie
@TS (the original):
How many vaccines could be paid for with the money wasted on all these lawsuits?
Dan B
@BruceFromOhio: You misspelled Idaho.
The MAGATs are threatening health officials at their homes. Some of them were suburban housewives’ pre-teen children being threatened by armed vigilantes.
P.S. Iowa could be next.
P.P.S. The Kochs are concerned.*
*Concernstipated?
Cermet
For the white elite this is a marriage made in heaven. Keeping the great unwashed fighting against the intellectuals (i.e. anyone with an IQ above a trump voter) and enables them to keep stealing wealth from the middle class/poor without worry of being stopped. And yes, this will lead to the destruction of this republic (for white males that aren’t rich.)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ksmiami: ..So then those very sick patients are helicoptered to city hospitals where they fill up the intensive care units like has happened in my state. Healthcare is networked care. It doesn’t just kill them, it kills us too.
schrodingers_cat
@frosty: It was a bloodbath in 1947 and the subcontinent is still living with the results.
Just Chuck
@Spanky: Unlike 1937 Spain, the vast majority of people live in urban areas now.
Dan B
@eddie blake: Steve Schmidt agrees with you. His interview with Michelle Martin on Amanpour and Company last night was a study in controlled rage.
I feel we need to give the garden variety MAGAT an off ramp and a sane destination. Narrow off ramp is fine by me.
MJS
@NeenerNeener: He meets some of the requirements, including being rich, but he is nobody’s idea of “flashy”. He also has “follower” written all over him – for instance, when he initially criticized Sydney Powell, and then had to turn around the next night and apologize. Frankly, I think Hannity comes closer to fitting the bill, but he’s nothing but a bootlicker (first GWB, now Trump).
Cacti
I also think the idea that Repukes aren’t recognizing Biden because they fear Trump’s cult is missing the mark.
That may be part of it. But I think an even bigger part of it is that 90+ percent of elected Republicans in DC would be perfectly fine with Republican Judges overriding an election and awarding Trump a second term.
How many of them does anyone here think would say “No! This is wrong.”
Bill Arnold
@Ksmiami:
There are external enemies of the United States who very much want this to happen. Perhaps they are subtly pushing for civil war and/or rebellion and/or smaller internal fissures, and for other things that weaken the US.
pluky
@germy:
bloodily (see India/Pakistan, Korea N&S, the former Yugoslavia).
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cacti:
Ok. If that last case was summarily dismissed by SCOTUS with a one sentence ruling, what makes you think this Texas thing is going to make any difference? You’re fear-mongering
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Geez, this thread sure is cheery, isn’t it?
MJS
@Dan B: This is where social media needs to be utilized. Show up to protest at someone’s private residence? Fine. Let’s get your picture out on social media, and find out where you work. Then contact the employer and ask if they like to employ people who threaten people in their homes. Self-employed? Yelp and other review sites are perfect for pointing out a contractor’s fascist tendencies.
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: I know.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Bill Arnold: Yes. Subtly pushing for civil war in the comment sections of blogs.
Cacti
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The Texas suit is a symptom. The larger problem is, the GOP is now an anti-democracy party, and the American right is now an anti-democracy movement.
That isn’t something that’s long-term survivable for a democratic republic.
Do I think SCOTUS would overturn an election and declare someone our new overlord? Not for Donald Trump. Do I think they would do it for someone smarter and more stable than Donald Trump? Sure do.
geg6
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Thank you. This.
Kattails
I keep thinking of this scene in regards to dealing with the Republican party as it has chosen to reconstruct itself. Never gets old
I want unity, but there are people who need to do some serious soul searching–and that might be some voters in the conservative rolls. This is not sustainable.
sab
@Ksmiami: I don’t want to turn them away. I want them to be sensible,
You are the one who wants my RWNJ state to secede, with the lefty cities and their hospitals.
I want a Federal government that reflects to voters, not the electoral college.
Miss Bianca
@zzyzx: The comments are funny – they range from reasonable and reasonably informed to so intellectually deficient as to be almost poignant.
As opposed to the usual range on the conservative/libertarian sites I’ve occasionally blundered into, where it’s almost exclusively the latter rather than the former.
Dan B
@sab: How many protestors are from Wadsworth?
Cacti
Donald Trump has set the blueprint for a fascist takeover of the U.S. government.
Someone smarter and more dangerous than him will come along and try to finish what he started.
mrmoshpotato
This crap was too crazy for Idaho and Wyoming.
Just sit with that for a second.
Steeplejack
@sab:
I’m just going by what an alleged lawyer said recently, either here or maybe on @Popehat’s Twitter feed.
sab
@Ksmiami: Things are so bad that we cannot actually contact trace. Ohio we are at purple. Basically nobody knows where they got it because it is everywhere.
My stepson has it . Mild case. He only found out because his workplace is vigilant and his unit has too many Trumpers so they test a lot.
His fiancee works with special needs little kids. Probably where they caught it.
But nobody knows.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cacti:
This might be a valid point. We’ll have to wait to see what happens 1/20/21 and after Trump’s death.
Doing so would not only make themselves irrelevant, it would be painting targets on their backs for the rest of their lives
sab
@Dan B: Probably none. That is a ways away. We love our tenant but urk as a city. It is button cute adorable but defiantly WHITE.
Chief Oshkosh
@Spanky:
I wonder if the “ag centers” will ever figure out that another word for “population centers” is…
“CUSTOMERS”
Probably not.
CaseyL
I understand the point that there are Democrats, and even Democratic strongholds, within Red states.
I am sure there were abolitionists who lived in the slave-holding states, as well. But I don’t recall that those abolitionists pleaded with their Northern friends and relatives to exempt their particular states from the Civil War.
The point that 40% of the voting population is anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian dictatorship is no longer questionable. The fact that more and more of them are advocating, if not committing, violence against their opponents is also not questionable. The fact that they are backed by dark interests who’ve been working toward this end game for a long time is not questionable.
How long before the whole thing ignites?
I put it no later than January 20, 2021. Maybe sooner, depending on what SCOTUS does with that ridiculous, but incendiary, lawsuit.
Dan B
@Ksmiami: See Steve Schmidt’s *interview on Amanpour and Company last night. The Lincoln Project has plans. They see a long duration project to crush Trumpism. They are essentially centrist Dems with the superior strategic skills of business and marketing.
*Schmidt has been publicly fighting Trump since before 2012.
sab
@sab: Also too my other stepson’s fiance had an attempted robbery where some guy tried to threaten her with a hatchet, and she countered him with a baseball bat. Convenience store. She is physically tiny but fierce.
I am beyond shook up
ETA: Some of us have loved ones who live in the real world, with Covid and massive unemployment.
Dan B
@H.E.Wolf: Agreed!
Some of the communication techniques that the right wing has so skillfully deployed, without the pandering to our worst instincts, and the development of institutions to reliably and consistently support grassroots democratic efforts would be good.
We don’t need to emulate authoritarian and abusive approaches, or purity traps.
RSA
From the 2010 census it’s estimated that 55% of Black Americans live in southern states. This would be an awkward reward to the most reliably Democratic constituency over the past several decades.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Hmm. Maybe something like this is feasible. Personally, I would be super happy if St. Louis became part of Illinois. The biggest problem with it is the electoral college. The loons who want the State of Jefferson could join Idaho.
Dan B
@Ksmiami: The highest rates of Covid-19 in WA are in agricultural areas, up to 700+ per 10,000 in some. Most cases are in Latino workers. They get fired if they fail to go to work. So if you want rural areas to suffer there are horrifying consequences primarily to people we should support.
Mitch McConnell wants to protect these Big Ag corporations, whose managers take bets on how many Latino and Asian workers will die.
Bill Arnold
Here’s the list from the documents linked in the top post. Let ’em know, politely, that you consider them to be seditionists and/or enemies of the USA, if you’re so inclined.
Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas
Brent Webster, First Assistant Attorney General of Texas,
Lawrence Joseph, Special Counsel to the Attorney General of Texas
John C. Eastman, [email protected]
Donald J. Trump
ERIC S. SCHMITT, Attorney General, MISSOURI
D. John Sauer, Solicitor General, Counsel of Record, MISSOURI
Justin D. Smith, Deputy Attorney General, MISSOURI
Steve Marshall, Attorney General, STATE OF ALABAMA
Douglas J. Peterson, Attorney General, STATE OF NEBRASKA
Leslie Rutledge, Attorney General, STATE OF ARKANSAS
Wayne Stenehjem, Attorney General, STATE OF NORTH DAKOTA
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, STATE OF FLORIDA
Mike Hunter, Attorney General, STATE OF OKLAHOMA
Curtis T. Hill, Jr., Attorney General, STATE OF INDIANA
Alan Wilson, Attorney General, STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Derek Schmidt, Attorney General, STATE OF KANSAS
Jason R. Ravnsborg, Attorney General, STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA
Jeff Landry, Attorney General, STATE OF LOUISIANA
Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General, STATE OF TENNESSEE
Lynn Fitch, Attorney General, STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, STATE OF UTAH
Sean D. Reyes, Attorney General, STATE OF UTAH
Tim Fox, Attorney General, STATE OF MONTANA
Patrick Morrisey, Attorney General, STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA
( IANAL but maybe of interest, CHAPTER 115—TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES )
Ksmiami
@schrodingers_cat: they slaughtered each other on mountain passes… But unless and until the GOP is cut off at the knees, this country cannot live.
Ksmiami
@Dan B: I’d like to partition the country and move poor and minorities to blue areas… I just think we cannot go on like this
Ksmiami
@RSA: Keep Georgia and North Carolina- I just don’t see how we fix the stupid and it is literally killing us…
Ksmiami
@Dan B: yes we need to root Trumpism out including crushing their outlaw media networks
Ksmiami
@CaseyL: Well-said…
Ksmiami
@sab: I guess my point is either our government needs massive restructuring or we are finished as a nation.
Ksmiami
@Cacti: since all they care about is power- Rule or Ruin, of course they’d be ok with it.
Ksmiami
@sab: yeesh, but isn’t your state one of the places where MAGAts threatened a dedicated medical expert working for your governor? Well this disaster of a pandemic didn’t happen by itself… I live in Dallas but will sell everything and gtfo
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ksmiami: That is not how the first amendment works. Are you even an American?
ColoradoGuy
Look at this from Putin’s perspective. You have an experienced KGB officer who actually experienced his country, formerly a great world power, disintegrating morally (abandoning the faith of Communism), economically, and losing all of its border states. Naturally, Putin sees this calamity as a CIA plot that exceeded all expectation and resulted in the ruination of the Soviet Union.
He is going to want to do this to the USA. Not just civil war, but to erase the idea itself, just as the USSR was erased from the maps of the world, and can never be re-constituted, since Communism was mortally wounded and is never coming back. The equivalent would be to destroy the Enlightenment and all of its fruits … basically, the entire modern world.
Weirdly enough, the far-right is OK with this. Their goal, as insane as it sounds, is the destruction of the Enlightenment, and a return to a type of techno-feudalism, using mass media to destroy rational ways of thought. Thus, the anti-mask movement, allied with anti-vaxxers, and the QAnoners. The broad goal is the destruction of the Enlightenment. If the USA, and everything it stands for, is shattered into a million pieces, so much the better.
Uncle Cosmo
It’s just too fucking bad there isn’t an equivalent of disbarment for statisticians. One Charles J. “Chooch” Cicchetti, Ph.D., also known as “Piled-Higher-&-Deeper Goombah,” ought by rights to be enjoined for the rest of his natural life from any gainful activity involving mathematics more sophisticated than counting the jellybeans going into a dime-store “guess-how-many” raffle jar.
(Why, oh why, does it always seem that the lyingest liars, the raciest racists, the fasciest fascists are descended from emigrants from my ancestors’ former homeland? All of whom are cordially invited to Fare in culo, lateralmente!)
lateralmente
Sloegin
Has SCOTUS ever handed out rule 11 sanctions? There could always be a first.
Matt McIrvin
@Uncle Cosmo: Don’t sweat it, a lot of them are descended from emigrants from all of my ancestors’ homelands. Donald Trump himself has a lot of overlap.
schrodingers_cat
@Ksmiami:Are you being purposely obtuse or do you really have no clue about the scale of violence during 1947 following the partition of British India
Your statements about India’s partition are ignorant and more than a little offensive.
Dan B
@sab: Wadsworth was integrated! There were two black students in my class of 240.
It could have been Parma. During the riots in Hough the mayor of Parma, population 100,000, said they were integrated. There were a couple families on the other side of a steep ravine – no connecting roads.
During the riots in Akron the rumor in Wadsworth was there were armed hoodlums coming to burn Wadsworth….. Because we were vulnerable and a desirable target.*
* 10 miles is close depending on how it’s measured. Sigh.
Matt McIrvin
@zzyzx: There are some hilarious comments there–a bunch of people trying to find some way to blame this on Democrats. Apparently the legal profession is so controlled by nefarious liberals that the only people who would take Trump’s case were a bunch of fools, and that’s why the suits are so pathetic.
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: We were at the home of friends in Delhi during the India / Pakistan World Cup Final. Grandpa, who had been on a train in Punjab Pakistan in Partition was swearing profusely. They’d never heard him swear.
I believe that the majority of people on the train were slaughtered.
Emma from FL
@schrodingers_cat: The partition proponents seem to be as stupidly bloodthirsty as the MAGAs.
Ksmiami
@Emma from FL: not bloodthirsty just worried where we are headed… and very good at thinking about things that people think are improbable that become actualities.
Ksmiami
@schrodingers_cat: I actually know how horrible it was…and still is a lingering scar. I think we have the potential to be worse
No One You Know
I’m not gonna ask my neighbor if I can borrow his SORE LOSERMAN sign… which he put out directly facing the street, “back in the day.”
I am, however, enjoying thinking about it.
Ksmiami
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Yes very American and no the first Amendment and the rights to an independent press do not cover incitement, misinformation and seditious propaganda.
SFAW
@germy:
She wanted to, but she decided I needed some extra tucking-in tonight.
cokane
What makes this especially troubling is that this is not a Trump instigated move. This is the Republican Party.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Barbara: Actually this is nothing new, “states rights” was always the right of the Southern states to tell the other states what to do.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck: Even more pathetic consider this done the day after SCOTUS blew off Trump’s previous attempt to throw the election. They all know this is just going to fail and this is so the Republicans blame SCOTUS when their crazy base loses it.
Emma from FL
@Ksmiami: Just remember. Cassandras have a really good record on events but a lousy one on aftermaths.
Ksmiami
@Emma from FL: I’ve never been praised for being right…
schrodingers_cat
@Dan B: The death toll was the worst in Punjab on both sides of the border.
lowtechcyclist
Late to this thread, but:
OK, this totally can’t happen, but that’s my fantasy.
artem1s
@germy:
exactly where does lump brain live? I hardly doubt it’s in a fly over or southern state. And who is the ‘we’ he’s speaking of? he’s perfectly free to renounce his citizenship and give up voting in the US elections if he wants. sounds like the hate radio idiots are encouraging the base of the GOP to drop out and stop voting. they are complete morons
the GOP managed to take control of government by appalling to non-voters who typically don’t engage. It was a great strategy while it lasted, but I think they have finally killed the goose that laid that golden egg.
lowtechcyclist
@artem1s: If they want to secede, I say give ’em the Dakotas and the eastern half of Montana, and anyone who doesn’t want to be part of OUR nation can move there. And we could build Trump’s wall – on the border between that disaster area and the remaining United (even more than ever) States.
They would soon find out how totally a nation run their way would suck. But that would be their problem.
SteveinSC
@Mike in NC:
Just sent this to the idiot running my state MacMaster:I would like to understand why the State of South Carolina has decided to file an amicus brief alongside other states in support of the Texas effort to undo the results of the recent presidential election. Surely this is flirting with sedition, since the State of South Carolina has no standing w.r.t. how elections are run in other states. As a native South Carolinian whose ancestry goes back before the Revolution, I do not have to remind you of the unhappy result of the last time South Carolina engaged in sedition, in 1860. Your actions only bring disrepute to the Palmetto State and make you look like a lickspittle or boot-licker to the soon-to-be-ejected shit flinging baboon in the White House. Have you no personal honor or self respect? It will take years to repair the damage done by this grifting Yankee con-artist. I await an explanation for your actions although, in all honesty, (a concept for which you appear to have so little consideration) I do not expect one.