Biden-anyone believe he can take office?

Well, to be honest, it doesn’t matter that he commands the military. I can’t think of any possible conditions under which the military would act to maintain him in office. If anything they would forcibly remove him. He is no longer president after a certain date and at that point Biden commands the military. And he will have no legal grounds to claim the election is void, no matter what he thinks of the fairness of the vote. His presidency expires. Removing him is easy–at a certain point he just no longer has the right to occupy office, or the white house, or to expect to be able to command the federal government.

waterfield wrote:

My fear is we are in danger of losing a peaceful transition unless we exercise the 25th amendment now and to do that we need the Congress which we don’t have at this time. This could end up, god forbid, in invalidating any and all elections. We then have a true dictatorship-which may have been his goal all along.

I think all that stuff is toothless on his part, W. Attempting to maintain the power of a dis-elected president is not only something the military would never support, it would positively resist it. What would he do then–send ICE and militias against the American military?

And there is no Congress that would sanction disavowing direct elections.

I’m not saying he’s going to be all accepting and reasonable.

I’m saying there is really nothing he can actually do to stay in power.

…

waterfield

What’s is really scary to me is that 57 % of white Americans-not just men-voted that Trump continue in power. Why ? I don’t think we can put all this on corporations. There is something going on that I can’t put my finger on. Is it the increase in overt racism? If so how did we elect Obama?

Check out:

The Social Dilemma on Netflix

The Brainwashing of My Dad on Tubi

These two films help explain the continued support of Trump…

From Obama to Trump to Harris as VP. As John Oliver stated on Sunday. This country is a mix of Racists and non racists folks. “That’s just who we are as a country.”

I highly recommend watching The Social Dilemma…. describes the huge impact that Social Media is having on humanity….

Also: Trump ordered the entire Executive to block any efforts by the Biden team to start the transition. Trump has thousands of political appointees who have ordered their respective fiefdoms to ignore all requests from the Biden team.

And Trump is firing anyone who won’t go along with this, including the Defense secretary, or they’re quitting.

This is not a done deal. Why? Again, Trump will do anything to avoid jail or forced exile, and it looks like the GOP is largely in support.

IMO, the Dems are making a huge mistake in assuming this will all die in the courts, in their favor. They need to go on offense instead. Launch their own lawsuits against GOP voter suppression efforts, and the House should hold immediate hearings on this and the corruption of the Postal Service. They won’t. They don’t do offense. But they desperately need to.

I’m a ‘little’ worried. But not a ‘lot’ worried.

Mainly because i think the System is fine with Biden. The CIA, NSA, Pentagon, Military, etc. If Bernie had won….i dunno.

w
v

wv wrote:

I’m a ‘little’ worried. But not a ‘lot’ worried.

Mainly because i think the System is fine with Biden. The CIA, NSA, Pentagon, Military, etc. If Bernie had won….i dunno.

w
v

You may be right, WV. But I think Trump has, ironically, proved that his own conception of the supposedly awesome power of the Deep State is nonsense, and that the Greenwalds of this world were wrong to cast it as a monolith. It if were all powerful, Trump never would have survived the Mueller probe, which we’ve recently learned, was purposely limited and truncated up front . . . nor would he have survived the impeachment process.

No president has been this systematic in his takeover of the Executive branch, with a combination of angry threats, intimidation, and firings, especially of Inspector Generals, which once was unheard of.

You can blunt the impact of an entrenched bureaucracy by killing off the watchdogs, appointing loyalists to manage it, and scaring everyone to death about their own futures. When you have the full support of half the duopoly, and a fanatical cult, egged on by a well-heeled mediaverse, it’s even easier.

I’m getting worried, and I fear the Dems will be all too passive, as is their wont.

WWDJD* in their place? The Dems don’t have that in their DNA.

*What would Deacon Jones do

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by Billy_T.

Billy_T wrote:

wv wrote:

I’m a ‘little’ worried. But not a ‘lot’ worried.

Mainly because i think the System is fine with Biden. The CIA, NSA, Pentagon, Military, etc. If Bernie had won….i dunno.

w
v

You may be right, WV. But I think Trump has, ironically, proved that his own conception of the supposedly awesome power of the Deep State is nonsense, and that the Greenwalds of this world were wrong to cast it as a monolith. It if were all powerful, Trump never would have survived the Mueller probe, which we’ve recently learned, was purposely limited and truncated up front . . . nor would he have survived the impeachment process.

No president has been this systematic in his takeover of the Executive branch, with a combination of angry threats, intimidation, and firings, especially of Inspector Generals, which once was unheard of.

You can blunt the impact of an entrenched bureaucracy by killing off the watchdogs, appointing loyalists to manage it, and scaring everyone to death about their own futures. When you have the full support of half the duopoly, and a fanatical cult, egged on by a well-heeled mediaverse, it’s even easier.

I’m getting worried, and I fear the Dems will be all too passive, as is their wont.

WWDJD* in their place? The Dems don’t have that in their DNA.

*What would Deacon Jones do

—————–

Well you and i disagree on what Greenwald is saying. I dont think he is saying the deep-state is totally ‘monolithic.’ But i dont want to quibble over that.

I agree with you on Trump. He has been
the Corporotacracy version of a Clown-Caesar.

It will be wonderful to be rid of him. No more daily trump assaults.

Keep your fingers crossed.

How does one govern a nation like this. So many large factions.

And the real-left is so tiny. What did the green party get this time? Two percent again? 75 million for Biden. 70 Million for Trump. 350,000 for Howie.

Now lets say a lot of lefties voted for biden out of a strategic sense. So lets be generous and give the Left another, oh, 5 million. That would be 70 Million Biden-ists. 70 million Trumpists. And 5 or 6 million leftist/progressives.

Not a pretty picture.

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

<
For the last five years, Trump has broken one law after another, destroyed umpteen “norms,” and far too many Americans are just numb to it.

Why isn’t this a “hair on fire” moment for the entire country? First time ever an incumbent loser has done this. And it might work. He’s flooded the zone with lawsuits, and set the table to win the one in Pennsylvania, primarily because they already sequestered the mail-in stuff. So a loyal Trump judge, and then the far-right SCOTUS, could just say throw them all out.

And, of course, he’s ordered the entire executive to refuse all requests from the Biden team, and is stoking serious unrest among the far-right that it’s a “stolen election.”

If Trump gets away with this, he’s president for life. If he lives long enough to implement further changes, the GOP will be the permanent ruling party, and we’re likely going to have the Trump family “inherit” the presidency.

I don’t trust the Dems to put up an actual fight to stop this. Hope I’m waaay wrong. But I think we’re witnessing a . . . at least potentially . . . a successful fascist coup.

The task is enormous, though. They have to have some kind of legal pretext to throw out votes, and it has to pass at least 2 courts, a state court, and the SCOTUS. At least, I think that’s how it works. They really cannot just say, “These ballots were mailed, so they should be thrown out.” That just won’t fly.

Then…they have to throw out results from at least 3 states. Even if they twisted PA, it wouldn’t matter. They have to execute three successful challenges. That seems like a Herculean task to me.

Zooey wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

<
For the last five years, Trump has broken one law after another, destroyed umpteen “norms,” and far too many Americans are just numb to it.

Why isn’t this a “hair on fire” moment for the entire country? First time ever an incumbent loser has done this. And it might work. He’s flooded the zone with lawsuits, and set the table to win the one in Pennsylvania, primarily because they already sequestered the mail-in stuff. So a loyal Trump judge, and then the far-right SCOTUS, could just say throw them all out.

And, of course, he’s ordered the entire executive to refuse all requests from the Biden team, and is stoking serious unrest among the far-right that it’s a “stolen election.”

If Trump gets away with this, he’s president for life. If he lives long enough to implement further changes, the GOP will be the permanent ruling party, and we’re likely going to have the Trump family “inherit” the presidency.

I don’t trust the Dems to put up an actual fight to stop this. Hope I’m waaay wrong. But I think we’re witnessing a . . . at least potentially . . . a successful fascist coup.

The task is enormous, though. They have to have some kind of legal pretext to throw out votes, and it has to pass at least 2 courts, a state court, and the SCOTUS. At least, I think that’s how it works. They really cannot just say, “These ballots were mailed, so they should be thrown out.” That just won’t fly.

Then…they have to throw out results from at least 3 states. Even if they twisted PA, it wouldn’t matter. They have to execute three successful challenges. That seems like a Herculean task to me.

Again, hope you guys are right. But Trump, Barr and company are simply not above creating and planting false evidence. They did that with Hunter Biden’s magic laptop, that just happened to wind up in the hands of a diehard Trump supporter/computer shop.

The main thing these judges have been saying when they toss the lawsuits (so far) is you don’t have any evidence of fraud. What happens when they manufacture it and get their cultists to act as “witnesses”?

To me, once a political party has a growing cult of people who believe the other party literally eats babies, drinks their adrenaline, and engages in teen sex-trafficking, nothing is off the table

Late morning isn’t too early to start drinking heavily, right?

Billy_T wrote:

The main thing these judges have been saying when they toss the lawsuits (so far) is you don’t have any evidence of fraud. What happens when they manufacture it and get their cultists to act as “witnesses”?

Prediction? It would go nowhere.

Except when you guys get all . . .

Billy_T wrote:

Which reminds me, Zooey. How did your proposed imitation of the Ginger Man go the other day?

Tequila, or Whiskey?

I went with tequila, but I made it only two shots deep into my drinking before the fun went out of the evening. I had some tentative plan to make up a game with names I would toast to when they got defeated, but the election did not go well, and I shut it off when it was looking like a 50/50 toss-up.

i’ll be honest. some of you guys got me a little shook. i mean this couldn’t possibly happen could it? could trump turn this country into a dictatorship? that would have to be the mother of all hail marys.

Trump fired Mark Esper & hired Christopher Miller, who says, Osama bin Laden is sill alive.

Trump also fired for of the top Officials in the Pentagon. He decided to hire Anthony Tata as Pentagon Policy Chief. This guy is known as a nut job. He believes in this QAnon stuff.

Trump is doing whatever to take America down with him, by destroying it.