2020 USA presidential election

I really hope Trump loses the election but Biden is the archtype of a losing Democratic candidate. The dictionary example. The loser stink is strong. And the fact that the Liberal media thinks Trump calling WW1 soldiers "suckers" is front page material is a bad bad sign. If this was a sports match, you would think they were deliberately trying to throw the game.

The Jimmy Dore Show

https://youtu.be/q9zKOpKmv4k

"Biden says he will increase the military budget."

The Jimmy Dore Show

https://youtu.be/js5t_loxiEw

"Democrats performative political theatre will be the end of us all."

More on the 'fantastic irrelevance of the American duopoly' and 'a United States that will resemble Brazil'.

USA Political and Economic Collapse

https://youtu.be/dZ8aW58JCnA

Chris Hedges discusses with economist Rick D Wolff, the economic and political collapse of the American empire. 'Trump and Biden are figureheads, the heads of parties that are only about the careerism of politicians and not the social issues we face as a nation. And that's never been clearer than today..."

Arthur and Frank explained they’re not followers of QAnon. Frank says she spends most of her free time researching child sex trafficking, while Arthur adds that she often finds this information on the Russian-owned search engine Yandex. Frank’s eyes fill with tears as she describes what she’s found: children who are being raped and tortured so that “the cabal” can “extract their blood and drink it.” She says Trump has seized the blood on the black market as part of his fight against the cabal. “I think if Biden wins, the world is over, basically,” adds Arthur. “I would honestly try to leave the country. And if that wasn’t an option, I would probably take my children and sit in the garage and turn my car on and it would be over.”

https://time.com/5887437/conspiracy-theories-2020-election/

I was going to say the same, Josh. Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican backgrounds vote very differently than those from Cuba and more recently, Venezuela. Back in the 80s, refugees from Central Amercia to Canada also had a similar divide - those from Nicaragua were ardent anti-socialists while those from El Salvador cherished assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero as much as Black Americans continue to cherish Martin Luther King Jr.

“Mass Voter Disenfranchisement”: GOP Ramps Up Assault on Voting Rights Across U.S. Ahead of Election

With just seven weeks to go before the U.S. presidential election, the battle for the White House is increasingly being fought in courts across the country. From Wisconsin to Florida, Pennsylvania to Colorado, judges are making major rulings deciding who gets on the ballot, how a record number of mail-in ballots are handled and distributed, and who ultimately gets to vote on November 3. Ari Berman, senior writer at Mother Jones and author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” says Republicans are carrying out a nationwide attack on voting rights aimed at keeping a shrinking white minority in power. “This is the Republican Party’s game: Don’t do anything for the American people, make it as hard as you can to vote, and then put in place judges who will then uphold those new voter suppression laws.”

Everyone knows how this will play out. It's going to come down to the Republicans' ability to disenfranchise POC's votes vs the Democrats' ability to turn out the vote in a small number of key swing states. 

The problem is no one doubts the ability of the Republicans to disenfranchise voters. Biden on the other hand is the weakest Democratic candidate in my lifetime (I was too young to remember Carter's campaign so I don't know if that would be comparable. Seems pretty weaksauce in hindsight.) Fuck anyone who tries to blame the left for this. It was the DNC and the centrists who wanted to run this sadsack. We're all hoping that the sheer awfulness of Trump turns out voters and American democracy is robust enough to fight off the Republican disenfranchisement campaign. But how can anyone paying attention not be extremely pessimistic?

No Matter Who Americans Vote For The Duopoly Always Wins (and vid)

https://twitter.com/TheSpinReport/status/1305556129934536704

"How do you spin Empire?"

Nancy Pelosi's Political Priorities (and vid)

https://twitter.com/partynxs/status/1306015487273377792

"If this capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to aid for Israel."

"I'm referring anyone who wants to virtue signal and voter shame leftists for not wanting to vote for Joe Biden to this excellent clip from Jimmy Dore..."

https://twitter.com/Anarch_King/status/1306428230610624512

Court Halts “Drastic Operational Changes” at USPS, Warning of Widespread Disenfranchisement

A federal judge in Washington state has temporarily blocked the U.S. Postal Service from new operational changes that have slowed down mail delivery ahead of the election. Judge Stanley Bastian accused President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy of being “involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service.” He also said the changes created a “substantial possibility many voters will be disenfranchised.”

On Thursday, Trump continued to cast doubt on mail-in voting. In a tweet, he wrote, “the Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED, which is what some want.” Twitter flagged Trump’s tweet and provided information about how voting by mail is safe and legal.

BREAKING: US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87 dies of pancreatic cancer. President Trump is expected to put forth a nominee to fill RBG's seat in the coming days, multiple sources close to the president and with direct knowledge of the situation tell ABC News.

I read the article and followed a link to this https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-defeat-the-empire-3bfdd468f439

She is way too naive. She thinks the alternative is to tear down the whole system and doing anything else is a waste of time. Beginning with:

Our psywar is fought with the goal of using our unprecedented ability to circulate information to continue to kill public trust in the mass media, not with lies and propaganda, but with truth. If we can expose journalistic malpractice and the glaring plot holes in establishment narratives about things like war, Julian Assange, Russia etc, we will make the mass media look less trustworthy.....

....Without an effective propaganda machine, the empire cannot rule. Once we’ve crippled public trust in that machine, we’ll exist in a very different world already, and the next step will present itself from there. Until then, the attack on establishment propaganda should be our foremost priority.

We tried that, it led to Trump. It led to believing it is all "fake news" turning people towards conspiracy theorists.

Undermining trust in government as an entity let to Trump, the non-politician sent to the White House to drain the swamp.

Voting for Biden does nothing to undermine the revolution and the Supreme Court crisis underlines just how important this is for the rights of women and minorities. BLM will erupt with more violence which Trump will crack down on mercilessly. He has already encouraged violent white supremists to attack BLM protests. They want a race war that black people will lose, and they will lose.

This will not cause Americans to rise up and revolt against the system. It will cause Americans to demand more power for police to protect them and even the military to squash sedition.

The grand majority of people just want to go about their lives in peace. Americans still think the US of A is the best country in the world. They are proud to have the most powerful military in the world.

Another Trump presidency is dangerous.

In another thread, discussing the pros and cons of the Canadian Charter's notwithstanding clause, I commented that U.S. progressives might be wishing for a notwithstanding clause of their own. Well, I just found out that such a thing is in fact lurking in Article 3 of their constitution.

Christopher Jon Sprigman wrote:

Perhaps the most powerful argument for jurisdiction stripping is that the Constitution clearly permits it. Article III, section 1 of the Constitution gives Congress complete discretion on whether to create the lower federal courts, a power that Congress has used from the founding to limit lower courts’ jurisdiction. And Article III, section 2, clause 2 explicitly empowers Congress to make “exceptions” to the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction—that is, to pick and choose for approximately 99 percent of the Supreme Court’s total docket what cases the Court has the power to hear. As I explain in a law review article, to be published in December in the New York University Law Review, under its Article III authority, Congress can remove the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction over particular cases, or particular issues, largely without constraint.

Joe Biden Torpedoes Bernie Sanders in Pitch to Wisconsin Voters Worried About Socialism...

https://www.mediaite.com/news/joe-biden-torpedoes-bernie-sanders-in-pitc...

"Former VP Joe Biden rather bluntly invoked his Democratic primary victory over Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders when he was asked to allay Wisconsin voters' alleged worries about socialism, saying 'I beat the socialist!'

"The Democratic Party is less a political party in pursuit of  particular policy goals than a professional association organized to defend and advance the careers of its most valued members." - Osita Nwanevu -

The following Atlantic article, entitled "The Election That Could Break America", discusses plans that Trump already has in operation to steal the election. The Republicans already have legions of lawyers set to contest mail-in non-Republican ballots, because they already know the names of the vast majority of their voters. Thanks to extensive canvassing and computers they plan on contesting other ballots to run out the clock to December 8th so that under the Constitution state legislatures can then appoint electors to the electoral college. All six of the so-called battleground states, as well as others, have Republican dominated legislatures that could then pick the electoral college electors and thus the President. 

Conventional commentary has trouble facing this issue squarely. Journalists and opinion makers feel obliged to add disclaimers when asking “what if” Trump loses and refuses to concede. “The scenarios all seem far-fetched,” Politico wrote, quoting a source who compared them to science fiction. ...

There is no version of the Interregnum in which Trump congratulates Biden on his victory. He has told us so. “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention on August 24. Unless he wins a bona fide victory in the Electoral College, Trump’s refusal to concede—his mere denial of defeat—will have cascading effects. ...

A lot of people, including Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, have mis­conceived the nature of the threat. They frame it as a concern, unthinkable for presidents past, that Trump might refuse to vacate the Oval Office if he loses. They generally conclude, as Biden has, that in that event the proper authorities “will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.

Trump’s state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states. Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice. The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president’s term in office “shall end” at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in. One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand. ...

“We are not prepared for this at all,” Julian Zelizer, a Prince­ton professor of history and public affairs, told me. “We talk about it, some worry about it, and we imagine what it would be. But few people have actual answers to what happens if the machinery of democracy is used to prevent a legitimate resolution to the election.” ...

Just under a year ago, Justin Clark gave a closed-door talk in Wisconsin to a select audience of Republican lawyers. He thought he was speaking privately, but someone had brought a recording device. He had a lot to say about Election Day operations, or “EDO.”

At the time, Clark was a senior lieutenant with Trump’s re­election campaign; in July, he was promoted to deputy campaign manager. “Wisconsin’s the state that is going to tip this one way or the other … So it makes EDO really, really, really important,” he said. He put the mission bluntly: “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes … [Democrats’] voters are all in one part of the state, so let’s start playing offense a little bit. And that’s what you’re going to see in 2020. That’s what’s going to be markedly different. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program, and we’re going to need all the help we can get.” ...

Of all the favorable signs for Trump’s Election Day operations, Clark explained, “first and foremost is the consent decree’s gone.” He was referring to a court order forbidding Republican operatives from using any of a long list of voter-purging and intimidation techniques. The expiration of that order was a “huge, huge, huge, huge deal,” Clark said.

His audience of lawyers knew what he meant. The 2020 presidential election will be the first in 40 years to take place without a federal judge requiring the Republican National Committee to seek approval in advance for any “ballot security” operations at the polls. In 2018, a federal judge allowed the consent decree to expire, ruling that the plaintiffs had no proof of recent violations by Republicans. The consent decree, by this logic, was not needed, because it worked.

The order had its origins in the New Jersey gubernatorial election of 1981. According to the district court’s opinion in Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, the RNC allegedly tried to intimidate voters by hiring off-duty law-enforcement officers as members of a “National Ballot Security Task Force,”. ...

This year, with a judge no longer watching, the Republicans are recruiting 50,000 volunteers in 15 contested states to monitor polling places and challenge voters they deem suspicious-looking. Trump called in to Fox News on August 20 to tell Sean Hannity, “We’re going to have sheriffs and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys” to keep close watch on the polls. For the first time in decades, according to Clark, Republicans are free to combat voter fraud in “places that are run by Democrats.” ...

Republicans and their allies have litigated scores of cases in the name of preventing fraud in this year’s election. State by state, they have sought—with some success—to purge voter rolls, tighten rules on provisional votes, uphold voter-­identification requirements, ban the use of ballot drop boxes, reduce eligibility to vote by mail, discard mail-in ballots with technical flaws, and outlaw the counting of ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward. The intent and effect is to throw away votes in large numbers.

These legal maneuvers are drawn from an old Republican playbook. What’s different during this cycle, aside from the ferocity of the efforts, is the focus on voting by mail. The president has mounted a relentless assault on postal balloting at the exact moment when the coronavirus pandemic is driving tens of millions of voters to embrace it.

This year’s presidential election will see voting by mail on a scale unlike any before—some states are anticipating a tenfold increase in postal balloting. A 50-state survey by The Washington Post found that 198 million eligible voters, or at least 84 percent, will have the option to vote by mail. ...

Summer also brought reports that the U.S. Postal Service, the government’s most popular agency, was besieged from within by Louis DeJoy, Trump’s new postmaster general and a major Republican donor. Service cuts, upper-management restructuring, and chaotic operational changes were producing long delays. At one sorting facility, the Los Angeles Times reported, “workers fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes.”

In the name of efficiency, the Postal Service began de­commissioning 10 percent of its mail-sorting machines. Then came word that the service would no longer treat ballots as first-class mail unless some states nearly tripled the postage they paid, from 20 to 55 cents an envelope. ...

Trump’s crusade against voting by mail is a strategically sound expression of his plan for the Interregnum. The president is not actually trying to prevent mail-in balloting altogether, which he has no means to do. He is discrediting the practice and starving it of resources, signaling his supporters to vote in person, and preparing the ground for post–Election Night plans to contest the results. It is the strategy of a man who expects to be outvoted and means to hobble the count. ...

Trump’s systematic predictions of fraud appear to have had a powerful effect on Republican voting intentions. In Georgia, for example, a Monmouth University poll in late July found that 60 percent of Democrats but only 28 percent of Republicans were likely to vote by mail. In the battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, hundreds of thousands more Democrats than Republicans have requested mail-in ballots. ...

Trump, in other words, has created a proxy to distinguish friend from foe. Republican lawyers around the country will find this useful when litigating the count. Playing by the numbers, they can treat ballots cast by mail as hostile, just as they do ballots cast in person by urban and college-town voters. Those are the ballots they will contest. ...

The worst case for an orderly count is also considered by some election modelers the likeliest: that Trump will jump ahead on Election Night, based on in-person returns, but his lead will slowly give way to a Biden victory as mail-in votes are tabulated. Josh Mendelsohn, the CEO of the Democratic data-modeling firm Hawkfish, calls this scenario “the red mirage.” The turbulence of that interval, fed by street protests, social media, and Trump’s desperate struggles to lock in his lead, can only be imagined. “Any scenario that you come up with will not be as weird as the reality of it,” the Trump legal adviser said.

Election lawyers speak of a “margin of litigation” in close races. The tighter the count in early reports, and the more votes remaining to count, the greater the incentive to fight in court. ...

Both parties are bracing for a torrent of emergency motions in state and federal courts. They have already been skirmishing from courthouse to courthouse all year in more than 40 states, and Election Day will begin a culminating phase of legal combat.

Mail-in ballots will have plenty of flaws for the Trump lawyers to seize upon. Voting by mail is more complicated than voting in person, and technical errors are common­place at each step. If voters supply a new address, or if they write a different version of their name (for example, by shortening Benjamin to Ben), or if their signature has changed over the years, or if they print their name on the signature line, or if they fail to seal the ballot inside an inner security envelope, their votes may not count. With in-person voting, a poll worker in the precinct can resolve small errors like these, for instance by directing a voter to the correct signature line, but people voting by mail may have no opportunity to address them. ...

During the primaries this spring, Republican lawyers did dry runs for the November vote at county election offices around the country. An internal memo prepared by an attorney named J. Matthew Wolfe for the Pennsylvania Republican Party in June reported on one such exercise. Wolfe, along with another Republican lawyer and a member of the Trump campaign, watched closely but did not intervene as election commissioners in Philadelphia canvassed mail-in and provisional votes. Wolfe cataloged imperfections, taking note of objections that his party could have raised. ...

The electoral combat will not confine itself to the courtroom. Local election adjudicators can expect to be named and doxed and pilloried as agents of George Soros or antifa. Aggressive crowds of self-proclaimed ballot guardians will be spoiling to reenact the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the Bush v. Gore Florida recount, when demonstrators paid by the Bush campaign staged a violent protest that physically prevented canvassers from completing a recount in Miami-Dade County. ...

Trump’s strategy for this phase of the Interregnum will be a play for time as much as a concerted attempt to squelch the count and disqualify Biden votes. The courts may eventually weigh in. But by then, the forum of decision may already have moved elsewhere. ...

The interregnum allots 35 days for the count and its attendant lawsuits to be resolved. On the 36th day, December 8, an important deadline arrives.

At this stage, the actual tabulation of the vote becomes less salient to the outcome. That sounds as though it can’t be right, but it is: The combatants, especially Trump, will now shift their attention to the appointment of presidential electors.

December 8 is known as the “safe harbor” deadline for appointing the 538 men and women who make up the Electoral College. The electors do not meet until six days later, December 14, but each state must appoint them by the safe-harbor date to guarantee that Congress will accept their credentials. The controlling statute says that if “any controversy or contest” remains after that, then Congress will decide which electors, if any, may cast the state’s ballots for president. ...

We are accustomed to choosing electors by popular vote, but nothing in the Constitution says it has to be that way. Article II provides that each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Since the late 19th century, every state has ceded the decision to its voters. Even so, the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that a state “can take back the power to appoint electors.” How and when a state might do so has not been tested for well over a century.

Trump may test this. 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 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. ...

In Pennsylvania, three Republican leaders told me they had already discussed the direct appointment of electors among themselves, and one said he had discussed it with Trump’s national campaign. ...

Republicans control both legislative chambers in the six most closely contested battleground states. Of those, Arizona and Florida have Republican governors, too. In Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the governors are Democrats. ...

In Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who oversees elections, is a Democrat. She could assert her own power to certify the voting results and forward a slate of Biden electors. Even in Florida, which has unified Republican rule, electors pledged to Biden could meet and certify their own votes in hope of triggering a “controversy or contest” that would leave their state’s outcome to Congress....

Rival slates of electors could hold mirror-image meetings in Harris­burg, Lansing, Tallahassee, or Phoenix, casting the same electoral votes on opposite sides. Each slate would transmit its ballots, as the Constitution provides, “to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate.” The next move would belong to Vice President Mike Pence.

This would be a genuine constitutional crisis, the first but not the last of the Interregnum. “Then we get thrown into a world where anything could happen,” Norm Ornstein says.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refus...

The Democrats Supreme Failure

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-democrats-supreme-failure

"...Despite their constant browbeating over judicial nominations, the Democrats are now coasting along with bizarre nonchalance during a presidential campaign season and behaving with the same lackadaisical attitude that cost them the 2016 election. In the must-win state of Michigan, the Biden campaign has no in-person voter outreach, and no one that people who want to help can talk to. Of course there are no field officers because an on the ground campaign doesn't really exist.

Democrats already had the campaign that was most important to them. Making certain that Bernie Sanders was not the nominee was their primary consideration. Beating Trump obviously doesn't count for very much. Hand wringing about Ginsburg's death is all that Democrats have to make their case..."

josh wrote:

The new senate, seated in January, has the final say on whether to accept a state's electors.  And which slate to accept, if there are competing slates.  This occurred in the 1876 election.  The new senate may well be controlled by the Democrats.

Meanwhile Trump is not guaranteeing a peaceful transition of power.

The Republican strategy is not simply to steal the Presidential election through voter suppression, lies, lawsuits and the Supreme Court but to do the same in the Senate elections making the Democrats chances of having a net gain of at least four seats and therefore control of the Senate much more difficult. 

To Fight Trump’s Rising Authoritarianism, Dems Must Drop Their Learned Helplessness

When a dictator sees weakness, the dictator tries to increase his own power — which is exactly what Donald Trump has done over the last twenty-four hours.

After Democrats spent the weekend signaling surrender on the Supreme Court vacancy and suggesting they have no appetite to fight over the judiciary or threaten to expand the court, Trump on Wednesday declared that he may not agree to a peaceful transfer of power, and he openly admitted that he is trying to rush through a judicial nominee so that the court can give him a second term. He suggested that he will “get rid of the ballots” and “there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”

This is a crime in process — specifically, a coup that will be engineered remotely by Zoom, as Republican lawmakers now plan to leave Washington without passing a pandemic relief bill and return only for votes to install a new Supreme Court justice to throw the election.

Amid this onslaught, Democrats are behaving as if you can stop a coup merely by telling people to vote in an election where their ballots might get thrown out.

But the lesson here is the converse: Democrats’ culture of learned helplessness is no match for authoritarianism.

If opposition party lawmakers don’t stop imagining a return to normalcy and brunch — and if millions of Democratic voters don’t start immediately demanding that their party’s leaders begin fighting to stop Trump’s court pick right now — then whatever is left of American democracy is probably finished.

Yes, the situation is that dire.

Democrats Cower, Trump Pounces

The events of the past few days have moved at lightning speed, so it’s worth reviewing what’s happened to see the story that’s unfolding.

It all started over the weekend with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer seeming to signal that Senate Democrats wouldn’t try to do much to stop Trump’s pick. At the same time, weeks after she gave a DNC speech saying Democrats are “championing a woman’s right to choose and defending Roe v. Wade,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi reacted to the Supreme Court vacancy by ending the threat of a government shutdown that might have obstructed an anti-choice court nominee.

When Schumer was subsequently shamed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into using at least some of the procedural power at his disposal — preventing the Senate from holding committee hearings Tuesday afternoon — senator Maggie Hassan’s office issued a statement saying the New Hampshire Democrat was “extremely frustrated that today’s hearing on defending state and local entities from cyber threats amid COVID-19 will have to be rescheduled.”

Meanwhile, other Senate Democrats chimed in by telling Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell that, actually, Republicans shouldn’t fear Democrats expanding the Supreme Court in the event that the GOP installs a Trump pick.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said on Monday she wouldn’t support ending the filibuster in a Democratic-controlled Senate — a prerequisite for any talk of adding court seats (or passing any progressive agenda items). “Well, I don’t believe in doing that, I think. I think the filibuster serves a purpose,” Feinstein said, according to The Hill. Ignoring the huge increase in GOP filibusters, she insisted: “It is not often used, it’s often less used now than when I first came, and I think it’s part of the Senate that differentiates itself.”.

quote:

Meanwhile, after Joe Biden managed to muster only a non-ironic appeal to Republicans’ nonexistent conscience, Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet went to the floor to apologize to Mitch McConnell for having the gall to previously violate Senate norms.

“I’m sorry about that vote,” Bennet said, referring to Democrats’ 2013 vote to end the filibuster for most judicial nominees, after Republicans routinely slow-walked Obama appointments.

“I’ve apologized on this floor before, about that vote,” he continued. “It has led us, partly, to where we are today.”

Those messages of surrender were quickly echoed by Democrats’ Senate candidates — they telegraphed to voters that even though the party has always said it would never capitulate on fundamental issues like abortion and civil rights, the judiciary is effectively gone, and there’s nothing they plan to do about it if they win their races.

With Democrats cowering in fear, Trump pounced.....

Senate Republicans release explosive report on Hunter Biden, Burisma

https://nypost.com/2020/09/23/gop-senators-release-explosive-report-on-h...

"...The report - which relies on information contained in 14 'confidential' reports - alleges that Hunter Biden and other Biden family members 'cashed in' on Joe Biden's vice presidency through a 'vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.'

In addition to his Burisma board seat, the report says Hunter Biden profited from a 'financial relationship' that he and associate Devon Archer had with Russia's richest woman, Elena Baturina, former wife of the late Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. In 2014 Baturina wired $3.5 million to a bank account held by Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden. The report says Baturina also sent 11 wires totalling more than $390,000 to a company called BAK USA LLC, with 9 transactions - amounting to about $240,000 - transferred through a Rosemont Seneca Thornton account, the report says.

The report alleges that Hunter Biden also had 'business associates' with 'Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government of the People's Liberation Army,' including energy tycoon Ye Jiamming, who was jailed in 2018 on suspicions of bribery, and Ye's associate Gongwen Dong [Hong Kong 'protest movement' backer]. 'These associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow,' the report says, adding that Hunter Biden and Gongwen 'opened a bank account -- to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with [Joe Biden's brother] James Biden and [James' wife] Sara Biden.'

The report notes that its findings are based on 'documents and testimony from US agencies and officials, not a Russian disinformation campaign as our Democratic colleagues have falsely stated.' It also accuses John Kerry of having 'falsely claimed' to reporters last year that he didn't know Hunter Biden had been named to the Burisma board when Kerry was secretary of state under Obama. 'I had no knowledge about any of that. None. No,' Kerry said, according to an account posted on Twitter at the time.

The report cites an email sent to Kerry's chief of staff on May 13, 2014 - one day after Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board - by Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, to inform him of the development. Heinz, who was Hunter Biden's business partner, also wanted to 'distance himself' from the decision, according to the report. 'Moreover, in May 2014, Senator Kerry's chief of staff, David Wade, briefed him about press inquiries specifically relating to Heinz, Hunter Biden and Burisma,' the report said.

Earlier this week, Biden's campaign said the Senate Republicans' probe was based on 'a long-disproven, hard-core, right-wing conspiracy theory,' and a spokesman on Wednesday accused Johnson of 'diverting' attacks from Trump's 'catastrophically botched' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic..."

Never mind the greasy shit with Poroshenko, Burisma and Ukraine, but taking  dirty money from the Russians and the PLA Chinese commies too? Say it ain't so Joe!

Activists who are otherwise progressive and even revolutionary can therefore end up, at best, reproducing the narratives propagated by authoritarian governments in peripheral countries; at worst, they could be actively supporting brutal repression.

The broad scope of this brand of “anti-imperialism” has also allowed right-wing types to make their way into various left-wing circles in the West, as part of a broader phenomenon in which fascist movements co-opt left-wing talking points in support of illiberal regimes or ideologies. This is amply illustrated by programs on the Russian state-affiliated outlet RT or Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” both of which regularly feature far-right and left-wing “anti-imperialist” personalities.

https://www.972mag.com/tankies-left-authoritarians-imperialism/

NDPP goes them one better by adopting right-wing talking points.

How “Extremist” Amy Coney Barrett Could Reshape the Supreme Court & Hand Trump the Election

As President Trump nominates conservative federal judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, we look at how an emboldened 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court could dramatically loosen gun laws, hurt immigrant communities and play a possibly central role in deciding a close presidential election. “Her religious conservatism is not what’s extreme about her. It’s her actual judicial opinions,” says Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation. “She does not use her religion to guide her through her decisions; she uses her extremist conservative views.”

epaulo13 wrote:

How “Extremist” Amy Coney Barrett Could Reshape the Supreme Court & Hand Trump the Election

As President Trump nominates conservative federal judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, we look at how an emboldened 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court could dramatically loosen gun laws, hurt immigrant communities and play a possibly central role in deciding a close presidential election. “Her religious conservatism is not what’s extreme about her. It’s her actual judicial opinions,” says Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation. “She does not use her religion to guide her through her decisions; she uses her extremist conservative views.”

But there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans

This dysfunctional country with a semi-insane President and rigged elections, chaos in the streets because its police forces are out of control, thousands of people in cages in detention ceners  must be a logical candidate for a global intervention under R2P.