[Tsundoku]

Ummm, I'm sorry but WTF?

Donald Trump refuses to commit to ‘peaceful transfer of power’ if he loses election

https://www.news.com...df188779c21ae17

*snip* At today’s White House media briefing, a reporter asked Mr Trump point blank whether he would yield power.

“Win, lose or draw, will you commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the election?” they asked.

“Well we’re going to have to see what happens,” Mr Trump responded.

“You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster.”

“But people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure there is a peaceful transition of power?” the reporter interjected.

“Get rid of the ballots and we’ll have a very peaceful – there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” said Mr Trump.

“The ballots are out of control. You know it, and you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats.” *snip*

----------------------

OK I understand this isn't exactly a flat out "No" but whoah ...

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'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?”

When The Atlantic asked the Trump campaign about plans to circumvent the vote and appoint loyal electors, and about other strategies discussed in the article, the deputy national press secretary did not directly address the questions. “It’s outrageous that President Trump and his team are being villainized for upholding the rule of law and transparently fighting for a free and fair election,” Thea McDonald said in an email. “The mainstream media are giving the Democrats a free pass for their attempts to completely uproot the system and throw our election into chaos.”'

https://www.theatlan...concede/616424/

[EmperorMagus]

Azath Vitr (D, on 24 September 2020 - 02:40 AM, said:

'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?"

When The Atlantic asked the Trump campaign about plans to circumvent the vote and appoint loyal electors, and about other strategies discussed in the article, the deputy national press secretary did not directly address the questions. "It's outrageous that President Trump and his team are being villainized for upholding the rule of law and transparently fighting for a free and fair election," Thea McDonald said in an email. "The mainstream media are giving the Democrats a free pass for their attempts to completely uproot the system and throw our election into chaos."'

https://www.theatlan...concede/616424/

Important counter-point to the above narrative:

https://twitter.com/...851838406610945

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Tsundoku, on 24 September 2020 - 01:04 AM, said:

Ummm, I'm sorry but WTF?

Donald Trump refuses to commit to 'peaceful transfer of power' if he loses election

https://www.news.com...df188779c21ae17

*snip* At today's White House media briefing, a reporter asked Mr Trump point blank whether he would yield power.

"Win, lose or draw, will you commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the election?" they asked.

"Well we're going to have to see what happens," Mr Trump responded.

"You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster."

"But people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure there is a peaceful transition of power?" the reporter interjected.

"Get rid of the ballots and we'll have a very peaceful – there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation," said Mr Trump.

"The ballots are out of control. You know it, and you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats." *snip*

----------------------

OK I understand this isn't exactly a flat out "No" but whoah ...

That is truly terrifying.

[Aptorian]

At what point are those white house reporters going to put decorum aside and just start asking him what the fuck Trump thinks he's doing? I get that these are briefings but at some point you need to just start throwing tomatoes at the stage instead of holding a microphone.

[Maark Abbott]

Aptorian, on 24 September 2020 - 07:16 AM, said:

At what point are those white house reporters going to put decorum aside and just start asking him what the fuck Trump thinks he's doing? I get that these are briefings but at some point you need to just start throwing tomatoes at the stage instead of holding a microphone.

Probably at the point they're no longer in his pockets.

[Garak]

He'll just have them thrown out and not care. After which he'll rant about the media bias against him and the deep state or mole men or whatever.

[QuickTidal]

Tsundoku, on 24 September 2020 - 01:04 AM, said:

there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” said Mr Trump.

----------------------

OK I understand this isn't exactly a flat out "No" but whoah ...

The bolded is the "No". You don't get more direct than "If it doesn't go my way, I'll still be here. Try me."

The fact that this coup is happening slowly doesn't make it any less of a coup.

[Mentalist]

QuickTidal, on 24 September 2020 - 11:30 AM, said:

Tsundoku, on 24 September 2020 - 01:04 AM, said:

there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” said Mr Trump.

----------------------

OK I understand this isn't exactly a flat out "No" but whoah ...

The bolded is the "No". You don't get more direct than "If it doesn't go my way, I'll still be here. Try me."

The fact that this coup is happening slowly doesn't make it any less of a coup.

Makes it an "institutionalized coup" .

God, the world is screwed.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Trump said he wants to confirm a ninth justice to the supreme court because he believes the court will determine the outcome of the presidential election.

"I think this will end up in the supreme court, and I think it's very important that we have nine justices," Trump told reporters at a White House event.

The president has previously indicated the federal courts will need to become involved in the election because it will be tainted by fraud.'

https://www.theguard...eme-court-video

'The Fanatic

[...] What first came to our attention as surprising accounts of specific actions out of sync with the way attorneys general are supposed to act has become a systematic torrent of actions building on one another to feed a rising crescendo of public alarm.

[...] Barr has left an extensive paper trail that goes back more than 30 years.

[...] Barr's better-known views relating to executive power posit that the Founders intended to create an all-powerful president, and he sees that vision as thriving until the late 20th century, when it was undermined by interference from Congress and the courts. To Barr, the role of religion in our public life has followed a similar trajectory. The Founders, according to Barr, believed that national success depended on America remaining a pious Christian nation, in which the worst inclinations of the citizenry would be constrained by obedience to God-given eternal values. That reality, he tells us, also substantially persisted until the late 20th century, when a combination of forces conspired to severely undermine it.

[...] according to Barr[...] we are embroiled in "a historic struggle between two fundamentally different systems of values." One of those is the "transcendent moral order with objective standards of right and wrong that exists independent of man's will," which is imparted by God, through his institution, the Church. The other is the worldview, developed starting with the Renaissance and accelerating during the Enlightenment, that knowledge, and thus arguably values, are derived from experience and science. [...]

But Barr does not discuss the latter worldview as an integral force behind the inspiration for and creation of the United States. Rather, he sees it simply as a force for secularism and moral relativism that has made "the tenets of Judeo-Christian tradition … sound increasingly jarring to the modern ear."

The crucial point for Barr is his claim that the thinking of the Founders, and therefore "the American government" they created, "was predicated precisely on this Judeo-Christian system" of values handed down by God. According to Barr, "the greatest threat to free government, the Founders believed, was not governmental tyranny, but personal licentiousness—the abandonment of Judeo-Christian moral restraints in favor of the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites."

[...] Barr largely ignores many of the most central elements of the American founding—especially those concerning freedom of thought and speech, and the individual pursuit of happiness. Nor does he see as significant the fact that the members of the founding generation, although mostly self-described Christians, had also been greatly influenced by the secular and rationalist outlook of the Enlightenment, and rejected most of the supernatural elements of literal Christian doctrine.

[...] According to Barr, "another modern phenomenon that suppresses society's self-corrective mechanisms—that makes it harder for society to restore itself" is that "we have the State in the role of alleviator of bad consequences. We call on the State to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility. … While we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting them." And he also decried "the way law is being used as a battering ram to break down traditional moral values and to establish moral relativism as a new orthodoxy."

Not surprisingly, Barr's prescription for restoring America to the Founders' supposed vision of a pious Christian nation is extensive indeed. Moreover, in many of its particulars, it comes within the reach of discretionary powers held by the attorney general. As Barr specified at Notre Dame, this means working to undo "watershed" decisions by the Supreme Court legalizing abortion and euthanasia, among others that are contrary to religious teaching. It means altering social legislation and policies by which the government relieves individuals from bearing the consequences of immoral personal choices.

[...] Barr writes that the president "alone is the Executive Branch," possessing literally "all Federal law enforcement power, and hence prosecutorial discretion." That includes, Barr is perfectly clear, "supervisory authority over [all] cases," including the right to direct the handling of cases involving himself, his friends, or his enemies.

[...] Barr goes beyond this vision of total and illimitable executive power to consider the president's authority and standing in relation to the other branches of the federal government.

[...] the numerous checks the Constitution created to limit the president's authority—the impeachment power, the House appropriation power, Congress's power to override vetoes, the need for a congressional declaration of war, and the Senate power to advise and consent, for example—seem to show that unchecked presidential power was prominent among their concerns.

Barr sees it differently. Notwithstanding that the abuses of King George III were the focus of the Declaration of Independence, and that the Founders chose in the Constitution to cabin the president's powers in significant ways, Barr argues that the Founders actually were not much concerned about an out-of-control president, as the "civics-class version" suggests.

Barr purports to find confirmation of this supposed Founders' vision of a president with substantially unchecked powers in what happened next. He would have us believe that this vision of an all-powerful president that he wants to restore has in fact been a reality for most of our history. Indeed, he says, "more than any other branch, [the American presidency] has fulfilled the expectations of the Framers." Thus, in his mind, strong and omnicompetent presidents led our government throughout the 1800s. Never mind the historical consensus that all but a few presidents before Franklin D. Roosevelt were quite weak, and that the greatest expansion of executive power came not early in our history, but in the 20th- and 21st-century era of the imperial president.

[...] Barr complains that the judiciary "has appointed itself the ultimate arbiter of separation of powers disputes between Congress and Executive." Indeed, he says that courts should play no role whatsoever in "constitutional disputes between the other two branches," because "the political branches can work out their constitutional differences without [resorting] to the courts." Beyond that, regardless of the complainant, courts should refrain from second-guessing the executive whenever its conduct involves the exercise of "prudential judgment," on claims of improper "motivation behind government action," or indeed any time when review would not be guided by "tidy evidentiary standards and specific quantums of proof." In sum, Barr would foreclose judicial review of executive action in pretty much any case where there is a debatable issue.

[...] Barr's ideas discussed here, which he has spent his adult life formulating, have made him a modern Don Quixote, on a mission to correct the apostasies that he believes have occurred in his lifetime. Trump's election put into the White House someone who actually aspires to autocracy, and Barr was able to offer himself up to make that a reality. [...]

But Barr's ticket to ride the white horse in his imagination can be rescinded at any time. As Trump said in August, Barr could be "the greatest attorney general in the history of our country," "but if he wants to be politically correct, he'll be just another guy." So Barr has to dance to Trump's tune. Also, Barr knows that his role of redeemer in chief will end unless Trump gets another term in office.'

https://www.theatlan...utm_source=feed

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 24 September 2020 - 03:50 PM

[QuickTidal]

Quote

The Founders, according to Barr, believed that national success depended on America remaining a pious Christian nation, in which the worst inclinations of the citizenry would be constrained by obedience to God-given eternal values.

This blows my mind while this guys dad is the one who gave one Jeffrey Epstein (who had ZERO teaching experience) a job teaching at an expensive private school where he practiced grooming young women. Bill Barr's dad literally gave Epstein the start to where he ended up...and it never gets talked about.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 24 September 2020 - 04:42 PM, said:

Quote

The Founders, according to Barr, believed that national success depended on America remaining a pious Christian nation, in which the worst inclinations of the citizenry would be constrained by obedience to God-given eternal values.

This blows my mind while this guys dad is the one who gave one Jeffrey Epstein (who had ZERO teaching experience) a job teaching at an expensive private school where he practiced grooming young women. Bill Barr's dad literally gave Epstein the start to where he ended up...and it never gets talked about.

'In 1973, Donald Barr published Space Relations, a science-fiction novel about a planet ruled by oligarchs who perform child sex slavery.'

https://en.wikipedia...iki/Donald_Barr

He hired Epstein in 1974.

https://mavenroundta...i4E6K1uYBqP5DOg

Donald was a professor of literature at Columbia before that... as an undergraduate there he majored in anthropology and mathematics.

It's perplexing that an intelligent, 'well-educated' person could become a fanatical believer in the literal truth of Catholicism (or any religion similarly invested in past 'miracles' and what in the light of modern science is blatant superstitious nonsense). In the case of Ted Cruz, perhaps childhood indoctrination explains it (though it also seems plausible that Cruz and his ilk are just using superstition to cynically manipulate the masses).

But Donald Barr was raised Jewish, only converting to Catholicism as an adult.... 'his son William would later describe him as "more Catholic than the Catholics."'

Before Columbia, he was in the OSS. 'OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.' No mention of graduate work before being hired as a professor.

'Father-Son Dynamic May Explain Tenure Of AG Barr

[...] they were a family - the Barrs - of contrarians. They were, you know, absolute, you know, doctrinaire Goldwater Republicans at this period in this world of a sort of a larger liberal culture.

[...] During the late 1960s and early '70s, Donald Barr began running afoul of many of the parents at the Dalton School because he became progressively more conservative and really doubled down on a lot of the students who were the straight-A students at the Dalton School's desire to be out protesting for the Vietnam War. [...] Dalton parents and trustees began an immense pushback against what many of them called the Captain Queeg who was running the Dalton School. And so he watches and absorbs his father being criticized quite publicly in The New York Times, in New York magazine, in the early 1970s as he goes into college for his father's doctrinaire conservative views.

[...] during his freshman year that the campus erupted into this large protest. And, quite fascinatingly, he was against all of this and has told people very close to him that he was barred from entering the Columbia University library to pursue his Chinese studies work.
he felt that this was anarchy. And at the same time, his father was writing quite tough, really, in retrospect, pretty shocking editorials and essays in Vogue and in McCall's saying that these were kind of limousine liberal protesters who would go to these protests by taxi, you know, at one point, going after the growing Black Power movement. This kind of language and this kind of dinner table conversation you can only imagine having a certain imprinting on a son.

When William Barr's father was really fired from the Dalton School - I mean, he was allowed legally to resign. But this was - for a young man who had just graduated from Columbia, this had to be a kind of emblematic moment. And you always wonder, you know, is this score settling? One of the teachers I interviewed who had taught at the Dalton School through the Donald Barr tenure said, when I watched Billy testifying before the Senate in May, I thought, this is his father revisited. Billy has a score to settle.'

https://www.npr.org/...nure-of-ag-barr

'From 1971 to 1977, while attending graduate school and law school, Barr worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).'

William Barr: 'My original career goal was to go into the CIA as a China expert, and so I focused on Chinese studies for my BA and MA at Columbia University. I remember in one of my Government classes, we were having a debate as to which foreign adversary posed the greatest long-term threat – Russia or China.

I recall the observation of one of my classmates in arguing that it was China that posed the greatest threat. He said, "Russia wants to conquer the world. We can deal with that. China wants to own the world. That is going to be more challenging to deal with." There was a certain truth in that.

[...] the PRC remains a dictatorship under which the Communist Party elite jealously guards its monopoly on power. Marxism-Leninism and Maoism linger on as justification for Communist rule, which is authoritarian through and through.

The Communist party is willing to resort to harsh measures to repress any challenge to its one-party rule, whether it be suppressing religious organizations, rounding up and "re-educating" Uighurs, resisting efforts of self-determination in Hong Kong, or using the Great Firewall to limit access to ideas and penalize their expression.

For a brief time after the Cold War, we had indulged the illusion of democratic capitalism as triumphant, unchallenged by any competing ideology. That was nice while it lasted. But we are now in a new era of global tension and competition. China has emerged as the United States' top geopolitical adversary, based on competing political and economic philosophies.

Centuries before Communism, China regarded itself as the Central Kingdom –the center of the world. Its ambition today is not to be a regional power, but a global one.

For China, success is a zero-sum game. In the words of then-General Secretary Xi, Communist Party members should "concentrate [their] efforts on . . . building a socialism that is superior to capitalism." Such efforts, Xi claimed, would require Party members to "consecrate [their] entire spirit, [their] entire life," for socialist ideals. The reward for this sacrifice, Xi promised, is "the eventual demise of capitalism."'

https://www.justice....-justices-china

Perhaps he found an echo of his father's ideas about 'licentiousness', ritual propriety, patriarchal tradition, and a 'natural' and eternal moral order in traditional Chinese thought... if not Xunzi's explicit argument that the superstitious aspects of religion are almost certainly false, but useful for controlling the ignorant masses and maintaining the social order/hierarchy.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 24 September 2020 - 06:03 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

(Xunzi in particular would appeal to Barr because he argued that human nature is inherently bad (similar to the Hobbesian conservative argument, and analogous to 'Augustine's teaching [...] that human nature is corrupt, radically sinful; and has been so ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve.'); Xunzi wrote, 'out of the crooked bark of nature, no straight thing was ever made.' 'He compares the process of reforming one's nature to making a pot out of clay or straightening wood with a press-frame. Without the potter, the clay would never become a pot on its own. Similarly, people will not be able to reform their nature without a teacher showing them what to do. [...] Xunzi laid out a program of study based on the works of the sages of the past that would teach proper ritual behavior and develop moral principles. He was the first to offer an organized Confucian curriculum, and his curriculum became the blueprint for traditional education in China until the modern period.')

https://iep.utm.edu/xunzi/

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 24 September 2020 - 06:37 PM

[amphibian]

Garak, on 24 September 2020 - 08:26 AM, said:

He'll just have them thrown out and not care. After which he'll rant about the media bias against him and the deep state or mole men or whatever.

The President and his press handlers have stuck to a strategy with three parts regarding actual reporters asking him questions.

The first part is that they are stuffing the official briefings with people from OAN, Fox, and other groups that will lob him super easy questions that are designed for him to hit his talking points. These people are scum, but they're his scum so they get the access and so on. Access is very heavily prized by reporters and unfortunately, they as a collective do not realize that it matters less with this administration than it's ever mattered before - the leaks will find them bc this administration loves to leak. Maggie Haberman had been puffing up Ivanka and Jared for years because they were leaking to her and it's fucked up the country to some degree bc people believe Maggie and she believes them.

Second, he's bullying the "bold" reporters and sometimes preventing them from getting into the room to ask questions. The reporters he has the biggest problems with are black and women.
https://www.vogue.co...nald-trump-feud

Third, the Trump administration is spinning so much bullshit on so many topics that the reporters mostly can't keep up. They're not equipped to cut through the bullshit over and over and research things in a way that someone like John Oliver can. They don't have the experience and they don't have the gumption/healthcare to continually put their job at risk to call these people out. How do you risk a mortgage and healthcare when the country already believes you're kind of bad at your job and the people with the power fucking hate you? Well, it's a tough decision.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 24 September 2020 - 07:16 PM, said:

The reporters he has the biggest problems with are black and women.

Indeed. One of my favourite things in the last few years is how completely un-manned (ha!) he becomes when he is challenged by women in front of others. You can watch almost any interaction where a woman takes him to task about something, and his reaction is always from the angle of someone who has not only spent his life to this point telling women what to do, and when to shut up, but has been severely abusive in that regard (See Ivana; marriage ect.) to boot...so to have to stomach hard questions from them enrages him...and it's palpable.

---------------------------------

A few other items from today:

One is Kamala responding to the travesty that is the Breonna Taylor Grand Jury result.

And another is Trump gets a much harsher revisiting of the Baseball incident when he went to the memorial taking place at SCOTUS for RBG...In case you can't hear it, they are chanting "VOTE HIM OUT' en masse...

I LOVE these little wake-up calls for him where he gets firsthand hearing of what most people REALLY think of him...

[Aptorian]

Apparently the first Presidential debate is next week. I'm so scared for the result. Will Trump get exposed or will Biden forget where he is?

[HoosierDaddy]

Aptorian, on 25 September 2020 - 04:33 AM, said:

Apparently the first Presidential debate is next week. I'm so scared for the result. Will Trump get exposed or will Biden forget where he is?

I have no intentions on watching it. There is no reason to pretend my vote is anything other than 100% solidified.

That being said, I am very anxious that people watching it will put any sort of expectations on Biden to "crush Trump" or "run circles around Trump." This will be what it always is when Trump is on stage: Him saying whatever he wants and defeating the entire purpose of the debate.

"Fake news." "Biased moderators." "Cheating Democrats."

Edit: And to be fair, a whole lot of "Trump [sucks]... is stupid... is a criminal...." on the Democratic side. I expect no highlighting of policy to take place here. ZERO expectations on that.

This post has been edited by HoosierDaddy: 25 September 2020 - 06:19 AM

[Terez]

I'm not watching it either. I hope Biden can do well because while HD and I and most people here are not going to be persuaded by it, poll-swinging debate moments are not exactly uncommon. There are three of them in my sig. But debates rarely entertain me, and I avoid watching Trump speak in normal times; it's just soul-crushingly awful. I might watch the highlights as they get clipped for Twitter, but that's it.

[Mezla PigDog]

I'm quite curious about how Trump approaches it. When he was debating Clinton he was still a pretender to the throne so kind of played by the rules. Since then he has torn up and wiped his arse with the rule book on civil rational verbal engagement with the opposition. His attempts at looking Presidential are laughable too. I just don't get how a "debate" can even happen.

[Aptorian]

"I could shoot a presidential candidate on a debate stage and not lose a single voter".