The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Ron Ecker]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

The Times Called Officials in Every State: No Evidence of Voter Fraud

The president and his allies have baselessly claimed that rampant voter fraud stole victory from him. Officials contacted by The Times said that there were no irregularities that affected the outcome.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/us/politics/voting-fraud.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

 

November 10, 2020

And I've called all the judges who have dismissed lawsuits filed by Trump's lawyers. The judges have assured me that they're not part of any anti-Trump conspiracy and that Trump's lawyers are simply full of crap.

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

How do we make peace with fascists?

I suppose a study of Denazification efforts in Germany after WWII might be in order to determine what worked and what didn't.

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

Trump’s Like ‘Barricaded Subject’ In Hostage Situation: Ex-FBI Assistant Director

“It may be that U.S. marshals have to come take the president out,” Frank Figliuzzi says.

By Ed Mazza 11/11/20

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-white-house-barricaded-subject_n_5fab4d72c5b68707d1fa4009

Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s former assistant director for counterintelligence, praised President-elect Joe Biden for how he’s handling President Donald Trump, who has refused to concede and is filing legal actions to overturn the 2020 election results.

“We’re coming very close to having what the bureau calls a barricaded subject,” Figliuzzi said on MSNBC on Tuesday. “The barricaded subject is in the White House.”

Biden, he said, is “right on the money” with how negotiators handle a barricaded subject initially.

“We saw a very calm Joe Biden today,” Figliuzzi said of the president-elect shrugging off many of Trump’s antics.

“That is exactly what you do in the initial stages,” he explained, adding that this involves letting the subject vent.

But eventually, he said, Biden will have to call the SWAT team.

That could be in the form of a legal challenge, or “it may be that U.S. marshals have to come take the president out,” he said. “As we say to a barricaded subject, we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way.”

Steve Thomas

[Joe Bauer]

48 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Trump’s Like ‘Barricaded Subject’ In Hostage Situation: Ex-FBI Assistant Director

“It may be that U.S. marshals have to come take the president out,” Frank Figliuzzi says.

By Ed Mazza 11/11/20

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-white-house-barricaded-subject_n_5fab4d72c5b68707d1fa4009

Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s former assistant director for counterintelligence, praised President-elect Joe Biden for how he’s handling President Donald Trump, who has refused to concede and is filing legal actions to overturn the 2020 election results.

“We’re coming very close to having what the bureau calls a barricaded subject,” Figliuzzi said on MSNBC on Tuesday. “The barricaded subject is in the White House.”

Biden, he said, is “right on the money” with how negotiators handle a barricaded subject initially.

“We saw a very calm Joe Biden today,” Figliuzzi said of the president-elect shrugging off many of Trump’s antics.

“That is exactly what you do in the initial stages,” he explained, adding that this involves letting the subject vent.

But eventually, he said, Biden will have to call the SWAT team.

That could be in the form of a legal challenge, or “it may be that U.S. marshals have to come take the president out,” he said. “As we say to a barricaded subject, we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way.”

Steve Thomas

I saw Figliuzzi say this on MSNBC yesterday myself.

I was wondering whether other major news media outlets would carry and re-report this former assistant head of the FBI's comments regards a possible scenario of using "U.S. Marshals" and his statement "we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way."

Because to hear a former top official even state such marshalling action possibilities as a warning to Trump and his people on national TV is an elevation of response to Trump's unprecedented beligerent actions I don't think we ever expected to hear regards and directed at a sitting president.

Figliuzzi's comments were ominous and even scary. I never thought I would see the day when such things were happening in our own federal government involving a sitting president.

The craziness with Trump is never ending.

Obviously this egomaniac is going to make himself the drama queen reality star center of attention every day until January 20th, 2021.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Andrew Prutsok]

1 hour ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Come on Joe, both sides are creating chaos, or maybe we should say, chaos is being created for both sides.

It's how the dialectic works.

The problem though is that the dialectic should not be working on this particular internet forum. We have mostly all been "red pilled" by more than a passing interest in the JFK Assassination and many subsequent events like 9/11.

As a compliment to the entire group here, I would say we are all too sophisticated to be fooled by the chaos. We at least all understand that it is mostly manufactured. 

 

 

 

 

I'm with Joe on this. Just because right-wingers are corrupt XXXXX, they assume everyone else is. Why I don't buy the the election fraud BS is because I've dealt with county clerks/local election administrators for 35 years professionally -- from Virginia to Arkansas to Ohio and now Montana -- and in all cases, the ones I've encountered are upright, good people who take their jobs and service to the public seriously. The level of corruption it would take to pull off what you allege is simply fantastic and not believable. 

 

I'm a county clerk, I'm going to risk my job, my reputation and jail to get Joe Biden elected president? What is in it for me? It just doesn't make sense.

[Ron Ecker]

4 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

How do we make peace with fascists?

I suppose a study of Denazification efforts in Germany after WWII might be in order to determine what worked and what didn't.

Steve Thomas

It's not just fascism, it's racism. I was born and raised in the segregated South, I still live in the town I was raised in, so I know it when I see it and I know what I'm talking about. I think I've noted before that every one of my surviving relatives that I know of is a racist. And guess what, they didn't vote for Biden. I don't have to ask them.

Wheeler seems to have taken your reference to fascism personally. There are "a lot of good people" in Trump's base (even my relatives are "good people," relatively speaking), but there are plenty of fascists (and racists) in Trump's base too and Wheeler of course knows it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Andrew Prutsok]

 

James Surowiecki, author of the Wisdom of Crowds, writes in the Washington Post today about how numbers like those being promoted here by Robert Wheeler, are not wrong, just presented out of context. A little digging shows the numbers/claims are not really outrageous at all and absolutely predictable. The goal is merely to get this stuff spread on Facebook to create the appearance of corruption and delegitimize Biden's election:

"Flat-out false numbers are, of course, easier to debunk. So the more artful way of presenting dubious numbers has been to simply omit any context, and to suggest the numbers are self-evidently outrageous. When former federal prosecutor and Trump ally Sidney Powell appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show Sunday, she said her group had identified “at least 450,000 votes” in “key states” where the ballot had been marked for Joe Biden but for no other candidate. This, Powell argued, was clearly problematic, while Bartiromo, for her part, said it merited a “massive government investigation.” The only problem with this analysis, as many people have pointed out since, is that “undervotes” — ballots where voters don’t vote in all the races listed — are surprisingly common in the United States, so much that in 2016, close to 2 million more votes were cast for president than for Senate candidates. The 450,000 number, then, isn’t especially surprising...

...The same is true of turnout numbers. In a recent piece for the Trumpist site the National Pulse, Steve Cortes — a senior adviser to the Trump campaign — claimed the 84 percent registered-voter turnout in Milwaukee this year “def[ied] reasonable expectations.” What Cortes failed to mention was that registered-voter turnout in Milwaukee in 2016 was 80 percent. So the increase to 84 percent, far from defying expectation, was predictable, given that turnout in Wisconsin as a whole was up about 5 percent...

...No one’s really trying to prove these claims, because they can’t; there is no meaningful statistical evidence of election fraud. What they’re doing is trying to create uncertainty, and doubt, to make it seem like something — even if not the particular thing they’re talking about — is wrong. They’re playing on our instinctive sense that where there’s so much smoke, there must be fire somewhere. But there is no fire. There are just lots of toxic, billowing clouds of nothing, blown here and there by a remarkably efficient smoke machine.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/11/vote-fraud-statistic-trump-ballots/

[W. Niederhut]

5 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

How do we make peace with fascists?

I suppose a study of Denazification efforts in Germany after WWII might be in order to determine what worked and what didn't.

Steve Thomas

It's an interesting historical subject.

How did Mussolini finally end up on a meat hook?

Military force was, obviously, a decisive factor in the collapse of fascism in Italy and Germany, but there was also a process of mass disillusionment with the Goons.

Hitler and Mussolini maintained power with military and police terror, but also with disinformation-- mass propaganda.

The Trumpaganda/disinformation infrastructure in the U.S. has played a major role in our current crisis.

The shocking "success" of the Sociopath-in-Chief in this election is predicated on mass illusions-- Trump's uncanny ability to manipulate 71 million people into believing that he is some sort of patriotic hero who has been economically successful, and will protect white people from dangerous darkies, Mexican rapists, etc.

We need to end the destructive illusions and mass disinformation of Trumpism.

[Richard Price]

I think the Trump fascists/(Republicans?) have corrupted and adopted one of the founding fathers quotations.  Benjamin Franklin's, "We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."  I know that in today's environment, there won't be actual hangings (unless the fascists win - then I'm not sure).  I truly do believe there MUST be some sort of price paid by these people or we have NO hope of continuing this Democratic-Republic experiment with all it's inherent failings.  For this country to survive, we are going to nee someone with the wisdom of Solomon to step forward and mete out true justice.  For once, I will interject my own (what most call religious beliefs) - I think GOD has already judged the US (both political side) and found us wanting.  Whether we continue on or pass into obscurity is still to be determined.  We will know in less than 70 days which path we're on.  The next revolution, which the founding fathers anticipated if this system became repressive, may be on its way.

[Joe Bauer]

19 minutes ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

 

James Surowiecki, author of the Wisdom of Crowds, writes in the Washington Post today about how numbers like those being promoted here by Robert Wheeler, are not wrong, just presented out of context. A little digging shows the numbers/claims are not really outrageous at all and absolutely predictable. The goal is merely to get this stuff spread on Facebook to create the appearance of corruption and delegitimize Biden's election:

"Flat-out false numbers are, of course, easier to debunk. So the more artful way of presenting dubious numbers has been to simply omit any context, and to suggest the numbers are self-evidently outrageous. When former federal prosecutor and Trump ally Sidney Powell appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show Sunday, she said her group had identified “at least 450,000 votes” in “key states” where the ballot had been marked for Joe Biden but for no other candidate. This, Powell argued, was clearly problematic, while Bartiromo, for her part, said it merited a “massive government investigation.” The only problem with this analysis, as many people have pointed out since, is that “undervotes” — ballots where voters don’t vote in all the races listed — are surprisingly common in the United States, so much that in 2016, close to 2 million more votes were cast for president than for Senate candidates. The 450,000 number, then, isn’t especially surprising...

...The same is true of turnout numbers. In a recent piece for the Trumpist site the National Pulse, Steve Cortes — a senior adviser to the Trump campaign — claimed the 84 percent registered-voter turnout in Milwaukee this year “def[ied] reasonable expectations.” What Cortes failed to mention was that registered-voter turnout in Milwaukee in 2016 was 80 percent. So the increase to 84 percent, far from defying expectation, was predictable, given that turnout in Wisconsin as a whole was up about 5 percent...

...No one’s really trying to prove these claims, because they can’t; there is no meaningful statistical evidence of election fraud. What they’re doing is trying to create uncertainty, and doubt, to make it seem like something — even if not the particular thing they’re talking about — is wrong. They’re playing on our instinctive sense that where there’s so much smoke, there must be fire somewhere. But there is no fire. There are just lots of toxic, billowing clouds of nothing, blown here and there by a remarkably efficient smoke machine.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/11/vote-fraud-statistic-trump-ballots/

Many more people vote for just one issue in presidential elections ( President) than is generally known.

My wife and I are voracious news followers reading, watching and even listening to ( radio ) much about the political news situation during presidential election times albeit mostly on the federal level.

We do some reading regards state and local issues but still find ourselves asking each other questions about many of them as they simply aren't reported in as much detail in the news.

However, one can imagine hundreds of thousands of voters not even reading about any other issues but the presidency during presidential elections or even caring about voting on them.

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

6 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

How do we make peace with fascists?

I suppose a study of Denazification efforts in Germany after WWII might be in order to determine what worked and what didn't.

Steve Thomas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification

"Denazification in Germany was attempted through a series of directives issued by the Allied Control Council, seated in Berlin, beginning in January 1946. "Denazification directives" identified specific people and groups and outlined judicial procedures and guidelines for handling them. Though all the occupying forces had agreed on the initiative, the methods used for denazification and the intensity with which they were applied differed between the occupation zones.

The term "denazification" also refers to the removal of the physical symbols of the poopoo regime. For example, in 1957 the West German government re-issued World War II Iron Cross medals, among other decorations, without the swastika in the center.

About 8.5 million Germans, or 10% of the population, had been members of the poopoo Party. poopoo-related organizations also had huge memberships, such as the German Labor Front (25 million), the National Socialist People's Welfare organization (17 million), the League of German Women, Hitler Youth, the Doctors' League, and others.[6] It was through the Party and these organizations that the poopoo state was run, involving as many as 45 million Germans in total.[7] In addition, Nazism found significant support among industrialists, who produced weapons or used slave labor, and large landowners, especially the Junkers in Prussia. Denazification after the surrender of Germany was thus an enormous undertaking, fraught with many difficulties.

The first difficulty was the enormous number of Germans who might have to be first investigated, then penalized if found to have supported the poopoo state to an unacceptable degree. In the early months of denazification there was a great desire to be utterly thorough, to investigate every suspect and hold every supporter of Nazism accountable; however, it was decided that the numbers simply made this goal impractical."

I would propose that we immediately outlaw the display of the Confederate flag.

Steve Thomas

[Dennis Berube]

7 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

How do we make peace with fascists?

First, stop watching CNN. I have to agree with Robert about the reliance of this forum on the MSM. To me, it is a grave mistake in analysis to view the MSM narratives about major political events as anything other than propaganda. This stance has been vindicated time and time again and shouldn't require an explanation.

 

Additionally, I believe it is a mistake to view Trump as the sole fascist. American fascism cannot work on the German/Italian model with a strong leader. Here, it would have to be a puppet ruling with oligarchical support because corporate power is too strong to allow a leader that isn't in their pocket. This is already close to what we have had for a long time. Trump will be gone in a short time regardless of this election, but the laws, rights, and legal precedents that are produced/reduced in this era could possibly go on for quite awhile, especially with the frightening censorship and constant propaganda that the "left" has seemingly embraced. It may be the Trump forces getting hit today, but the target is far more fluid than the precedent/capability if gone unchecked. To further the point, the Patriot Act...

Edited November 11, 2020 by Dennis Berube

[Joe Bauer]

This election more than past presidential ones has piqued my interest in and awareness of the complexities of voter demographics including gender, ethnicity, age, income, education, religion, urban versus rural residency, geographical residency, feelings regards candidate morality, race, the economy etc.

Seeing and contemplating the actual factual demographic numbers in this election presents an American political mind set reality that is quite different than even I thought I understood.

Just one demographic aspect ( I will add more to this post later ) that has startled me in my perception of Trump's base of support was the recent list posted here showing the breakdown of the voting numbers based on gender ethnicity.

White women in this country favored Trump over Biden by 12 percentage points!

55% to 43%.

I am still shocked at this reality.

Of course white males favored Trump equally.

This dual female, male white vote fact reveals that if white Americans only had the singular power to elect our President, Donald Trump would be elected in a landslide and probably given more than two terms.

It also means that a significant majority of white Americans believe that Trump has done a good job!

And his moral character, obsessive lying, encouraging extremist right wing and racist view groups and/or his reported dealings with corrupt others throughout most of his adult life are not issues of concern for them.

This is a head shaking, wake up call realization for me. 

I am trying to understand what this majority white America Trump support mind set is based on? How has it been shaped and so deeply imbedded. What is it born of?

I have always felt that 50 years of 50 million listener audience right wing radio talk programming ( brainwashing ) with a dozen personalities promoting the angry white mind set 24/7 on the radio airways versus hardly any left wing influence has helped shape this deep left hating and fearing sentiment.

Rush Limbaugh has spent the last 40 years demonizing the liberal mind set and linking the Democratic party to this boogie man fear mongering.

Limbaugh has always loved to share his cynical comedic takes on this boogie man/left wing threat.

He's always been a wanna be stand up comedian/ funny disc jockey at heart.

Incessantly using scary and derogatory and humorously insulting words, labels and phrases in his anectodal tirades.

Black welfare queens, commie sympathizers, California queer liberalism, unpatriotic flag burners, commie minded college professors brainwasing their students into hating America, illegal immigrant take overs, and on and on.

I still think this massive 50 year long national radio right wing promoting, left wing demonizing brainwashing propaganda campaign has a lot to do with white American's left and liberal hating and fearing mind set.

However, this election I honestly thought white female Americans had actually seen the disliking and disgusted light regards Trump especially in his insulting and demeaning sexual aggressiveness, attitude, comments ( "grab em by the pu$$y" ) and even predatory history towards women as documented by many victims ( E. Jean Carroll rape charge, Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, twenty others in the book "All The President's Women - The Making Of A Sexual Predator"  ) who were actually brave enough to put their real names in widely published accounts of Trump's abhorrent behavior in this way.

Topped by Trump's recent public pronouncement of sympathy towards jailed Jeffrey Epstein child sex predator victim procuror Ghislaine Maxwell.

Apparently all this sexual immoral behavior history on Trump's part means nothing to the majority of white American women!

What issue could be more important to white American women in shaping their favorable versus unfavorable views on Donald Trump than his well documented history of sexual predator behavior toward women ( them ?)

The economy? Race? Illegal immigration? Anti-abortion? What?

What do these Trump favoring white American women tell their daughters and granddaughters who may ask them -  Mom (grandma) why would you support a proven sexual predator as our president?

Again, the actual factual demographic numbers of this election have blown away my false logic perception in this realm of Trump support understanding.

White American women love this guy more than hate or even dislike him!

Roseanne Barr is truly and sadly the ideological Trump loving poster person of our white women majority!

What a reality wake up call! Personally a very disturbing one imo.

 

Edited November 11, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Steve Thomas]

Eight Members and Members-Elect of the Georgia Congressional Delegation wrote the Georgia Secretary of State requesting that he investigate voting irregularities in the State of Georgia.

It probably would have carried more weight if they knew how to spell Georgia.

Steve Thomas

[Andrew Prutsok]

Totally not fascist.