June 20, 2016

They'd spray Jiminy Cricket with DDT.

I'm sorry, but most active Republicans are racist fascist jingoists, and this primary proved it. A vote of so-called conscience would still be a vote for Trump.

June 20, 2016

How about let's profile Presidential candidates, eh?

No narcissists, histrionics, or sociopaths running for President or Vice President.

That would have ruled out Trump, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney.

Toss in dementia and we could cross off Reagan and maybe Trump twice over.

June 16, 2016

The timing of this suggests she won't be.

This is the general election black hole, where the nominees are presumptive and so is everything else. One of the largest bumps in voter interest comes with the official announcement of the nominee's chosen running mate, timed to hit the papers just before the convention hits its peak.

Therefore candidates and their staves have a large interest in keeping the press distracted from the actual nominee, by "dangling" other people before the press like so much raw meat above a lion pit.

So it looks like Elizabeth Warren is being offered as a "dangle." If she is the actual chosen running mate of Mrs. Clinton, the timing of this news report is either highly unconventional or very damaging.

This year insiders are knowingly whispering the name of Julian Castro, and look at the difference between that linked story and this one. Castro's people are desperately trying to shush speculation about a VP run, instead of encouraging it. That's exactly what you would expect to see from the actual presumptive running mate.

In the meantime, Donald Trump's campaign is FUBAR, but sooner or later they'll probably start playing the dangle game, too, because the press will push them into it. Generally, and especially with idiot draft dodging Republicans, they are paired with brass in proportion to how woefully unprepared they are and how fast they ran from combat. Nixon and Reagan needed decorated veterans; Shrub needed a Secretary of Defense; Trump is going to need a four-star something with a rack of purple hearts.

June 10, 2016

Non-payment is only the beginning.

The non-payment stories are only the opening salvo. I was amused to see the press hold back on publishing these stories until it was certain he would be the nominee. But after this it gets so much worse.

For example, there is the story of how Trump bribed Palm Beach County to allow him to burn off the underbrush on a property he owned, in one of the hottest weeks of the summer, with no wind. The smoke hung over the county for days and hospitalized dozens. Some surely died.

June 9, 2016

Looks like The Don just picked a running mate.

If he puts Pam Bondi on the ticket, Justice won't prosecute until next year.

May 31, 2016

NPR hyped the Libertarians all weekend.

It's clear to me now that those planning to steal this election have given up on any conservative force helping to pull it off as a third-party candidate. Trump's racism and nationalism is what Republicans have really wanted all this time and there's no stopping him now.

Now that Republican voters feel safe to tear off the mask and show their swastikas Trump is no longer a guaranteed loss and now the GOP has to find some force which can steal votes from both sides to ensure that nobody wins a majority of electoral votes.

So they've bounced out to the silly Libertarians, who are still struggling to position themselves as a viable third alternative. That's why "someone" decided to make them a major story on public radio this weekend.

With the Libertarians in the picture there are still two ways for Republicans to steal it from everyone:

1) Use the Libertarian presence to divert votes from both Trump and Clinton to toss elections to the overwhelmingly conservative state legislatures. Thus a plurality win by Clinton can be pissed away by diverting electoral votes to a non-viable candidate, like the state's own governor, for example;

2) Use election theft mechanisms to divert electoral votes directly to the Libertarians, winning entire states for them and keeping both Trump and Clinton below 270 electoral votes.

You can laugh and say I'm crazy today, but your kids will be joining in the torchlight marches tomorrow if you do. The way Republicans plan--and have been planning--to steal this election is to ensure that no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes. If that happens Congress is supposed to choose from one of the three top vote-getters, but if they DO NOT CHOOSE, then Speaker Paul Ryan inherits the Presidency through continuity of government provisions in January (assuming the GOP retains the House and Ryan is reelected as Speaker in early January, 2017). Congress has only two weeks at the end of this year to decide; if they can run out the clock then there is no provision for choosing a new President and COG rules prevail.

A third-party candidate is critical to Republican election theft plans because a third party makes public opinion polls less reliable and permits the massive Republican election-theft mechanism to work properly behind the curtains. Just divert one out of five votes for either Trump or Clinton to the Libs and suddenly nobody wins.

May 13, 2016

The poop-wave

Sometimes, storms off the coast of India churn up a thousand years of human effluvia from the sea bottom, and they paint the shoreline with mephitic, diseased feces from the past.

Donald Trump is that poop-churning storm, and now even Dan Quayle has washed ashore.

May 11, 2016

He's his own neologism.

Like Quisling, Chauvin, Bowdler, and Mesmer, Trump is well on his way to having a negative word coined after him.

For hundreds of years to come, a "Trumpism" will mean, "the factually vacant bloviations of an ignorant Fascist," and a "Trumpist" will come to mean "the rare ignorant fool who actually believes a Trumpism and the Fascist who proclaims it."

May 8, 2016

How Republicans can steal a contested election:

and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.

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

If no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, it is this very Republican Congress which would first have the option to decide, shortly after electors cast their votes, which is shortly after the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, or Monday the 19th of 2016.

At that point Congress is supposed to pick among the top three candidates--which is where the ultraconservative spoiler has a chance to steal it. The way the vote goes is strange: each state has only one vote, and a candidate must win 26 states. That works heavily in favor of the flyover states, which suddenly have a dramatically out-of-proportion influence relative to their populations. Mitt Romney got whooped by over 120 EVs and still won 24 states in 2012; I don't know how many states have a majority of Republican Members in the House, but thanks to their gerrymandering, I'll bet it's more than that. (Democrats might try to assert that it's the senior Member of the delegation who decides, but it won't work.)

They would of course pick among the two running Republicans if Trump does us the favor of flipping the House for the next Congress. But if he doesn't, there's another option....

Members of the House are up for election in only two years, and they'll pay dearly for stealing an election. What if they do what they do best, and do nothing?

Sure, they're supposed to immediately choose, just like the Senate is supposed to hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee. But nothing happens if they don't, and they only have to delay for two weeks before the 115th Congress ends.

One could and surely would argue that when the next, 116th, Congress takes over in early January, 2017, the window of opportunity to choose a President is clearly lost and now the line of succession as dictated by the 25th Amendment and continuity of government laws prevails.

And the evenly-divided Supreme Court would deadlock 4-4 and be of no help. It would be easy to run out the clock and simply move the problem beyond the 12th Amendment decision.

So if they don't choose in December, everything turns on the elections within Congress in the first week of January, 2017. It's a new Congress and therefore they have to elect a new Speaker of the House and President Pro Tempore, who are third and fourth in line of succession to the Presidency, according to continuity of government laws, and first and second when the terms of President Obama and Vice President Biden expire on January 20.

Whomever wins as Speaker--and Paul Ryan is the runaway favorite--would become acting President at noon on January 20, and in completely uncharted territory.

Is he supposed to hold an emergency election? Probably, but he won't. If you toss it into court, he'll nominate Dick Cheney as the ninth Supreme Court Justice and win 5-4, whatever he decides. Does the Acting President's term ever end? What if he declares a state of emergency and suspends elections forever? Republican criminals are in a position to decide all those things, and they're on the verge of a permanent demographic collapse, where stealing the United States forever might be their last and only chance to retain power....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession

Anyway, that's all I've found so far. Sleep well, Democrats. Check your voter registration first thing on Monday, and don't piss away your vote forever on a protest candidate, eh?

May 6, 2016

I have to make a real guess.

Usually, and this goes waaaay back, the more chickenhawkish the conservative front-runner, the more militaristic the running mate. Dick Cheney, a former Secretary of Defense, picked himself as W's running mate. Ross Perot picked Admiral James Stockdale. Reagan had combat veteran GHWB. Nixon had Bronze-star winner Spiro Agnew.

Plus Kevin Spacey's narcissistic opponent has a general sidekick, and House of Cards has been absurdly prescient about these things.

Here are six guys with about twenty stars between them who could be on the short list. Two of them are SOCOM generals or admirals, rare as hens' teeth and probably way too smart to run with Trump. Webb ran as a Democrat and is probably also too smart. Allen West might be too tea party to consider an offer. My money is on the Marine, Gen. James Mattis, with Adm. Samuel Locklear a close second.

http://taskandpurpose.com/6-military-leaders-who-could-run-for-president/

Someone was reputed to be vetting Mattis for an independent run against Trump a couple of weeks ago, but deciding not to run could be a tip that Trump got to him first, and that "change of heart" bullshit could work for them. The important thing is that Mattis showed an interest in running at all, which most people with stars don't.

Adm. Locklear, on the other hand, has recently fingered climate change as a destabilizing force and could serve as a powerful triangulator to draw in people who aren't drooling idiots. But he'd have to be picked by a drooling idiot and he'd have to say yes to a drooling idiot, and he's not one. But he got effed over for Chief of Staff. So there's that.