Let's be honest - it would have the Gideon Bible he stole out of the White House in his photo op where he gassed protesters and a whole wing about The Art of the Deal.

Or it'll just look like this:





SI

Please have cameras on Cotton, Rubio, Hawley, Haley, etc. when he announces that he's not going to stop running. I really want to see the moment they realize what is happening.

Rubio so desperately wants to be President and is trying to thread the needle of a Trumper and a non-Trumper. I think the problem is Trumpers see through this so stiill don't think he's one of them and he hasn't sufficiently distanced himself from Trump for the general electorate.

The GOP isn't the same party that it was when Rubio was a rising star. He has no shot at a GOP nomination as it stands.

Yet, they cry, bitch, moan and complain about the 'intolerant left'...

Steve Bannon Says He’d Like to See Dr. Fauci, FBI Director Wray Beheaded

Flomaton Police captain placed on administrative leave, could be fired after “put a bullet in their skull” comment about elections

His comment over the weekend saying he loved the Trump caravan surrounding the Biden bus is going to stick with him.

It is sad that I sort of liked Rubio one time. That feels like a lifetime ago.

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He was the generic go to name I'd use whenever I'd use the construction: "If it was President Rubio right now instead of Trump, would this be happening?"

SI

Yeah I used to at least think he'd be a respectable leader. Same with Pence.

We were wondering where the Republican party would go after this, and I think the closeness of this election answers that question - they'll stick with the Trump way of doing business, whether that be through him directly, or those converted by the example he has set. They're not jumping ship.

I dunno. I always pictured Pence as the country leader in Civ when you switched to Fundamentalism for government ("Our words are backed by nuclear weapons!" with no science and crazy loyal followers).

SI

This, the extremists and maybe a dictator is ok with us, wing of the party will be even louder.

There is no voice of reason in the Republican party.

Donating to Trump's legal fund for recounts includes fine print that says 50% of each donation goes towards paying off campaign debts. I bet the campaign "owes" the Trump Org a lot of money.

Everything's a con.

Acosta said his WH contacts said Rudi was "enabling" Trump in his current craziness.

From America's mayor to this.

It keeps his Boat scene out of news.

Ummm, what's going on behind the scenes.

Trump admin head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the federal agency responsible the NUCLEAR WEAPONS program, resigns provoking criticism from GOP chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee pic.twitter.com/1Vw1mNZ4Zx

— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) November 7, 2020

Twitter is saying Mark Meadows has covid.

The one thing Trump managed not to do in his 1 term was provoke a foreign nation to war. That's something. I don't even know who he'd randomly nuke on the way out the door.

That's because there was nothing in it for him.

I think he's just purging anyone who he feels has crossed him.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/06/polit...aid/index.html

North Korea? Iran? Most likely Iran. Would he pick a fight to try to justify breaking the constitution and staying in power? I really hope not.

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Bridge too far IMO. Yes, I can see him starting a war but that won't stop the transition of power.

Even if he tried, I don't think the military would let him. This is one of those aspects that I admit really frustrates me. For Trump's entire term people have been saying he's going to start a nuclear war, esp. during the Bolton nomination but it's just been a constant thing. He didn't, and there's nothing credible that even indicates he tried. He seems to have legitimately been someone who wanted to keep the US out of wars.

And I hope that continues. The as ominous thing about the Secretary of Defense sudden departure is the fear of trying to use the military at home.
Of course, there is something else as a possibility. He could be trying to ram home as many defense contacts as he can to his friends. Or even moving defense money into his family pocket. The only thing I know is that it is not for the betterment of America. There has to be a self-serving reason. There always is.

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I don't know for sure, but I think Romney enjoys sticking it to Trump almost as much as John McCain used to.


Romney: Trump’s election fraud claim wrong, ‘reckless’

Bye, Felicia

Well except when he said the United States government had identified 52 sites for retaliation against Iran if there were a response to Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani’s death. Some, he tweeted, were of “cultural” significance. On the flip side, he does lie a lot so that may not be considered credible.

One of the few Republican senators with integrity.

If I recall, Romney compromised his integrity some over the past 4 years. Better than many others but I wouldn't put him up on a pedestal.

Yeah, he's still a Republican but he did things to challenge Chump...can't say that for any of the others.

I'd be shocked, and think the military in grave dereliction of their duty, if we didn't have a similar list of sites for retaliation against any country we are even slightly concerned about. Contingencies are a must. If he actually attempted to act on those, that is/was/would be a horse of a totally different color.

This is the concession speech from the last incumbent President that lost his bid for re-election. Somehow, I don't think we'll be hearing anything like this from the current President.

That would require him to care about doing things like 'upholding the honor of the Presidency of the United States'.

Having looked that up earlier as well i noticed that a 3rd Party candidate got like 19% of the vote that year. Did not know that this was a thing not thaaaat long ago.

That was the year of Ross Perot

SI

pretend not even we most commited europeans find the time to cover 90s american politics at the dinner table or in schools ;)

And many of us might have been too young, too. But here's what I remember (with some assist from Wiki)

President Bush (41 not 43) was viewed as mostly unbeatable coming off the popularity of the Gulf War but then his tax policy and a recession really cut into his lead. All the while, many popular Dems didn't run and small state Bill Clinton and his neoliberalism platform won the Democratic primary. So this left an opening for Ross Perot, a Texas businessman who campaigned on running the government like a business. By summer, he was arguably the front runner. He would buy 30 minute chunks on national TV and lay out his plans in graphs and charts - I still think he went a long way to popularizing that style of PowerPoint management in people's minds (remember: this is still mostly pre-computer era). But then the opposition research caught up with him and he was getting drug down into the mud. I also seem to remember rumors about how the parties conspired to bring him down but they never really seemed credible. He dropped out of the race in late summer and that mostly killed the credible part of his candidacy. He re-entered in October, didn't have many good VP options, and still snagged 20% but wasn't really a factor - he peeled off 20ish% of the vote in most states but never enough to win any electoral votes.

I've always wondered what would have happened if he had actually stayed in the race the whole time and had been willing to build a political machine to support his candidacy. But maybe the latter isn't even possible, which goes to our "first past the post" system of government and why there will always, at most, be 2 parties (if a 3rd forms, it will just displace one of the other two and there will be a realignment). It's the only time in my lifetime that there's been a credible 3rd party candidate with any real chance of anything.

SI

By Monday basically all of the GOP players will have abandoned Trump. Even my Trumper friends are starting to move on to predictions for how the country will end during the Biden presidency.

And the Admiral!

GRIDLOCK!

Lockbox!!

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While we're at it ...

It's the economy, stupid!

If you’ve ever read On Wings Of Eagles you know who Ross Perot is :)

Matt Goetz has contracted the coronavirus

Not mine! One who literally said "Don’t worry-when all the voter fraud is uncovered and SCOTUS has the final say, Biden and his criminal enterprise will be locked up." That's from a self-described, "not a nutter". :lol:

Does he think that gives him more credibility? I thought that guy was a nut, but it says right here that he's not.

I am giving the governor the benefit of the doubt on the timing of this announcement.

Gov. Gary Herbert declares state of emergency for hospital overcrowding, case surge | coronavirus

I'm going to guess MAGA Country isn't going to give Pfizer the benefit of the doubt.

Just seeing this post. Two points:

1. As to the last point, that's called leadership. Sometimes it requires taking unpopular positions. Who cares if they would have been furious with him? I understand he takes his governing cues from Fox News, but we also understand how crazy that is. Early on, he had plenty of time to pivot.

2. He never took it seriously. The 15 days thing was just humoring the nation - it was 15 days because it ended on Easter. The entire "serious" strategy was a Christian-themed "resurrection of the country." If Easter had been 26 days away, he'd have pushed for 26 days. There was no science, no rhyme or reason to it. I can't even imagine the discussions around the strategy built on this narrative that must have been going on. And for each marker thereafter, they did the same thing - this will be gone by Memorial Day, the country will be rocking by July 4th, school will start, FB can come back and everyone can lead normal lives by Labor Day. It was all a con.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/healt...ive/index.html

Dow Jones Futures are now up over 1,100 points regarding this news.

Now we have to realize if we want the vaccine we probably can’t go get it until next fall. The general in charge of distribution on 60 minutes was saying hospital staff get it first and I assume nursing homes residents too which would start like January- March. Then it would start being distributed in April I assume for the general public but that is going to take a long time.

I get the part about hospital staff and maybe even first responders. Nothing I have seen regarding COVID and nursing homes leads me to believe that they are getting any sort of priority when it comes to vaccine distribution.

I do want to see the demographics of who is willing to get the vaccine first. Are those who believe they are more vulnerable to the effects of COVID more likely to wait to make sure of its safety? Are those who believe that the virus is not that big of a deal actually rush out to get the vaccine so they can truly get back to their normal life?

Fuck those old people, they should just isolate. I mean, isn't that the way a lot of people have approached this? Looking at you Dan Patrick.

Not isolate, take one for the team and die, wasn't that the gist ?

An old buddy of mine got it back in NoDak. He was told "everyone is going to get it, it's just a matter of time, it's spread too far and there's nothing more we can do". Not surprising for North Dakota.

My 90 year old mother that lives with us and who voted for Biden as well as every democrat ever would disagree with this approach. ;)

Ben Carson tested positive.

Esper has apparently been fired in a tweet

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If you are a bad actor targeting the US, these next 70+ days are going to be your best shot to do some damage.

True.

(1) he's just trying to do what all the cool kids are doing

and/or

(2) how hard is it to wear a damned mask? honestly it doesn't take a brain sur... uh... oh.

I don't know if Emily Murphy is a true believer but assuming she isn't, I feel sorry for her.

It's like a CEO of the company telling you not to do it and you can lose your job. Sure she can give the finger to the CEO and do it anyway, resulting in a job loss (which she probably needs) and the CEO appointing someone else to retract the approval.

In this case, although customary, it's not been confirmed yet so I guess she has some rationalization.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...96e_story.html

Either the Lincoln Project or Dem Coalition put her phone number on Twitter today.

Hilarious.

Unsure if this is real but still funny. Anyone know who she is and I'll create a HoN for her.


https://twitter.com/i/status/1325880755575160836

Top Republicans back Trump's efforts to discredit election results

Sandra smith

I debated whether to put this in the non-political forum, but decided to put it here. The sheer idiocy of these people is astounding.


Pfizer Said a Vaccine Was Almost Here. Anti-Vaxxers Lost It.

Pretty much this. My wife is 37, fit, smart, way more successful than me, but also has a rare heart condition and is likely getting a pacemaker in January. Looking at her, you'd never suspect COVID could wreck her. Someone yelled at her the other day for wearing a mask, as though her not wanting to die is somehow selfish.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/polit...rnc/index.html

IF this happens, the Republican party officially becomes the party of Trump, no?

Pretty sure we are there already. If nobody is going to speak up against him when he's lost an election while the rest of the party performed better, then when?

"Over 80% of irate responses were posted to Twitter and Facebook using the users' mobile phones which can, in no way, be used to track a person without their knowledge, listen in on them without their permission, or radicalize their viewpoints"

SI

I think many republicans would look at that as the last straw, and the party would alienate many more of them. A lot of republicans I've talked to are hoping for some new blood to rise to the top to challenge for the White House. Brian Sandoval would be a good possibility in my opinion. Sandoval was an extremely popular governor in Nevada, even amongst democrats, winning re-election with over 70% of the vote.

The moderate GOP governors are extremely popular, but they can't win the primary without giving up what made them popular in the first place. See Romney, Mitt.

It already has, regardless.

Honestly, don't we think that the Republican Party (whatever that means, in terms of leaders and such) has basically figure out through this whole Cult 45 exercise that logical/policy consistency is massively overrated, at least with the sphere of voters and stakeholders and corporate interests they care about?

Look at Lindsay Graham on the court nominee. Yes he said A, looked into the camera and told people to "use it against me." And then he said B, and all but looked into the camera and said "go fuck yourselves, suckers." And won. And remains a heroic figure, in part for doing so.

So, for all these Trump enablers who made unconscionable votes and statements in support of that guy, once the smoke clears and that guy is gone (hopefully)... don't you thin their plan will basically just be to say the new/different thing like nothing ever happened?

Who cares about the truth? A bunch of lamestream media types, elbow-patch professors and scientists, liberal coastal elites, and football text sim message boarders... none of them move the needle in empowering Republicans. Fuck 'em. Just lie, blame the media, and lie more. It works.

NEW: When Gov. DeSantis needed to hire a data analyst, his staff picked a little-known Ohio sports blogger and Uber driver whose only relevant experience is spreading harmful conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on the Internet. https://t.co/oLnW4LXAMY w/ @conarck @KirbyWTweets

— Nicholas Nehamas �� (@NickNehamas) November 10, 2020

You're not wrong.

This passage from a NYT article about QAnon struggling with Trump's loss gave me a laugh.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/t...ion-trump.html

I hear what you guys are saying. What I meant is with this move, we are done playing the game that Trump is a means to an end or an outsider as opposed to being the the heart of the party. That Trump is the Republican party.

While I disagree with who it is and what it means they represent, I give credit to the Republicans for actually defining who they are.

That's a big time, Q conspiracy. Not all anti vaxxers believe that, but 100% (well maybe not that high, but it's a big tenet the belief) of Q followers do.

Now for some non-religious discussion ... don't know if we are reading too much into what Kavanaugh said but it's a good thing, better than nothing.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/polit...ays/index.html

Could Trump govern without the House ? Like, technically. Not asking if he can do it well, only if it would be possible if somehow no one "removes" him (and all Democrats could do is boycot, which would presumably matter less in the minority in the Senate).
Anybody already made that thought experiment online perhaps ?

I'm surprised given the consistency in comments that I've seen from Q'ers. I just assumed they were pumping out this same election fraud nonsense.

I'm not surprised about diaper wearing popularity. That's the good stuff.

No. Anyone in power in the military has been pretty adamant they do not want to get involved in domestic political matters, and they wouldn't do anything until January 20th or whatever inauguration day is supposed to be, but if Trump hasn't left the White House and tries to keep governing by executive decree the military would be forced to pick a side.

I guess the weirder way would be to monkey around with the electoral college vote in December - MI/PA Republican's have already said no they won't interfere, and you don't have to worry about faithless electors when it's 300+ EV's not 270, but the legal mechanics of things aren't really as defined or understood.

Maybe QAnon was a Dem ploy to show undecideds how batshit-crazy Trumpers were? Now the election is over it has run it’s course...

I don’t believe that TBH, but if it were true it would be (flawed) genius

Q'anon is John Titor.

Didn't Aubrey Huff have that theory days ago?

Pretty sure it started as a joke and now is just being used by the guy who runs 8chan.

I feel that it is rather sad that someone could be filled with so much hate:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...s-say-n1247381

Americans will refer to this as radicalization when it occurs in other countries.

In the US, we call this Wednesday.

Please excuse my lack of shock and surprise that he is a nazi.

one step closer to being labeled as domestic terrorists

Perhaps the right thread? Unsure since there's multiples now:

Anyways...

What happens if the conspiracy that the elections aren't certified and the state electors get selected and get put in place to throw their votes to Trump, in essence stealing the election. The GOP Senators and House stand back and explain it away as they've done with literally everything and their morality as well (Christians! Ha!). What does the rest of the country do is my question?

Does the military intervene? Does the populace? I'm thinking no and Trump does in fact 'steal' the election, gets 4 more years and the country is neutered to do anything. Then the long tail is that he runs for a 3rd term because the first was so affected by a opposition party.

What are the things that could happen that I'm missing on the extreme crazy spectrum?

This stuff at the DOD

Scoop: Douglas Macgregor joining Pentagon as senior adviser to Acting SecDef. Sends the strongest possible signal that Trump wants to accelerate withdrawal of troops from the Middle East before the end of his presidency. https://t.co/grODh5w3aN

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) November 11, 2020

gets more ominous.

I would say all of that is on the extreme crazy spectrum except I think that is exactly what the Trump plan is, and he has telling us this for quite awhile. No one took him seriously or believed he had a chance to do it. I think he has a more than zero chance of doing it.

It's certainly non-zero, but it's also non-zero that Martians will land in Times Square in the next hour. I'd put both of them in about the same likelihood.

I would say the fact that the president has the power of the office, a complicit senate and a large portion of the country on his side, would give him a much higher chance of success than Martians.

But knowing the ramifications of this, especially based on the fact that these allegations are baseless. Is it really conceivable that our Government would allow this to happen for the sake of one mans fragile ego, knowing full well, that it would destroy America as we know it?

I just can't fathom that the senate would go beyond this current political theatre and stand by allowing him to burn democracy to the ground.

The Senate doing it wouldn't surprise me. I don't see the number of states required going that route. There's a lot of dominoes that would all have to fall in line for that to happen, and if they all do what you effectively have is a coup.