US Politics 2016: Delay the Electoral College Vote?

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

2 hours ago, dmc515 said:

This is funny weird.  I'm certainly not looking forward to the possibility of Trump reacting to a 9/11-level attack, but it also seems particularly maudlin to consider - or especially anticipate - such circumstances.  Does anyone think the currently constructed and prospective Trump administration can convincingly pull off the oft-cited on the internet but rarely actualized (in the U.S.) wagging the dog or false flag concepts?  The alternative is much more realistic - that Trump's administration precipitates an actual terrorist attack.  However, while this does seem plausible enough to entertain, I don't find doing so particularly dignified or (more importantly) useful.

It doesn't have to be a false flag for Trump who o take advantage.

The Reichstag fire wasn't a false flag as far as we know. It was some crazy Dutch guy acting alone. But the Nazis still managed to capitalize.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 He could handle that much the same way as he dispelled his part in the Birther controversy. He'll just blame Hillary. And his supporters will eat it up.

I suppose the standard communications strategy is to pivot to Hillary's purported improprieties, but nobody cares about her anymore.  He will have to confront Russia's involvement as the incoming Commander in Chief, which means either refuting his inherited bureaucracy or (much more likely) admitting Russian subversion in the most delicate way possible.

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

It doesn't have to be a false flag for Trump who o take advantage.

The Reichstag fire wasn't a false flag as far as we know. It was some crazy Dutch guy acting alone. But the Nazis still managed to capitalize.

Well, first of all, the Reichstag fire is pretty much a textbook example of wagging the dog that I mentioned.  Secondly, I refuse to accept the premise that we are currently in an analogous situation as 1933 Germany.

[Arakan]

7 hours ago, Kalbear said:

In terms of volume? Russia is worse. They're a far bigger country. Individual rights violations are worse, but Russia still has one of the largest per-capita prison populations in the world and is actively bombing civilians in Syria right now. 

and Saudi Arabia is actively bombig civilians in Yemen right now. Your point? 

[Mr Fixit]

35 minutes ago, Arakan said:

and Saudi Arabia is actively bombig civilians in Yemen right now. Your point? 

Oh come on Arakan. You didn't know Russians stoned their women to death or chopped off heads, hands, and feet on town squares? Give it a rest, man. You can't have a reasonable discussion with people who think what they think about Saudis just because they saw it on CNN.

[Hereward]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

Finally, to emphasize my point, the colleague I enjoy taking shots with the most right now is a Manchesterian who voted for Brexit and championed Trump.

[tangent] A person from Manchester is a Mancunian.  [/tangent]

[Jo498]

Maybe he means one holding a "Manchester economics" (Laissez faire) position.

While I think that a certain part of ressentiment rightists far overestimate the power of "academia", people like Haidt have presented very good evidence for the strong "leftist" (scare quotes because very few would have been considered leftist in the "maoist" humanities departments of the 1970s) bias of most academic departments beyond the hard sciences, law and economics. (Actually, clearly the most pernicious bias has been the lack of diversity in economical lore. Nobody of the most influential and highly decorated economists saw the 2007/08 crisis coming, actually some had received prizes for "proving" that such a crisis was "impossible" (for low values of impossible, apparently). They are posing as a hard science but are worse than the birdwatchers of ancient Rome.) And while it is true that one gets a reputation in academia by going against established position to some extent there are also clearly disadvantages for those too far from the mainstream.

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, Hereward said:

[tangent] A person from Manchester is a Mancunian.  [/tangent]

Damn I should've known that - if only from Charlie in Lost.  Think he's got a whole scene on that.  But thanks.  Frankly, the only reason I'm sure he's from Manchester is due to his football allegiance (he prefers ManU to ManCity).  But this opens up a whole new platform of ribbing - most of mine to this point has been making fun of general English stereotypes which has grown tired.  So, thank you much!

3 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

Maybe he means one holding a "Manchester economics" (Laissez faire) position.

While I think that a certain part of ressentiment rightists far overestimate the power of "academia", people like Haidt have presented very good evidence for the strong "leftist" (scare quotes because very few would have been considered leftist in the "maoist" humanities departments of the 1970s) bias of most academic departments beyond the hard sciences, law and economics. (Actually, clearly the most pernicious bias has been the lack of diversity in economical lore. Nobody of the most influential and highly decorated economists saw the 2007/08 crisis coming, actually some had received prizes for "proving" that such a crisis was "impossible" (for low values of impossible, apparently). They are posing as a hard science but are worse than the birdwatchers of ancient Rome.) And while it is true that one gets a reputation in academia by going against established position to some extent there are also clearly disadvantages for those too far from the mainstream.

No, I did not mean it in any economic ideology way - just a stupid American.  And yes, while you will find strong leftist biases - particularly in the soft sciences - the point is such leanings do not preclude the contributions of those with an opposing perspective.  On the contrary, opposing viewpoints are in actuality encouraged insofar as any divergent ideas are both nurtured and disproportionately highly regarded due to their freshness.  However, I agree with the bolded that there are limitations on this - certainly some concepts are deemed out of bounds by consensus.

[Gertrude]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

I suppose the standard communications strategy is to pivot to Hillary's purported improprieties, but nobody cares about her anymore.  He will have to confront Russia's involvement as the incoming Commander in Chief, which means either refuting his inherited bureaucracy or (much more likely) admitting Russian subversion in the most delicate way possible.

I honestly don't expect Trump to address it in any meaningful way. He will dismiss it and pivot to something else as he always does. I hope I am wrong. I want him to actually feel the responsibility and weight of his new position and rise to it, but I haven't seen indications of that yet. Instead we keep getting sad tweets and victory rallies so he can talk about how huge a winner he is.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

I honestly don't expect Trump to address it in any meaningful way. He will dismiss it and pivot to something else as he always does. I hope I am wrong. I want him to actually feel the responsibility and weight of his new position and rise to it, but I haven't seen indications of that yet. Instead we keep getting sad tweets and victory rallies so he can talk about how huge a winner he is.

I suppose that's a possibility.  I just hope, as president, him or at the very least his administration will be forced to give some type of substantive response by the press corps.  Traditionally, I would say that's a certainty.  But who knows, maybe he'll just tweet daily press briefings.  Sad thing is I'm only half joking.

[The guy from the Vale]

26 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

I suppose that's a possibility.  I just hope, as president, him or at the very least his administration will be forced to give some type of substantive response by the press corps.  Traditionally, I would say that's a certainty.  But who knows, maybe he'll just tweet daily press briefings.  Sad thing is I'm only half joking.

Trump hasn't held a single press conference in months. He's not going to give any response to the press corps, except for possibly some hand-picked syncophants.

As for refusing to see this as 1933, while we should all hope for the best, we also should prepare for the worst. And as for capitalizing on terrorist attacks, we don't need to go back 80 years - 9/11 also comes to mind,, and that was just the last Republican administration, which for all its incompetency seemed less scarily authoritarian.

[mormont]

31 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

I suppose that's a possibility.  I just hope, as president, him or at the very least his administration will be forced to give some type of substantive response by the press corps.  Traditionally, I would say that's a certainty.  But who knows, maybe he'll just tweet daily press briefings.  Sad thing is I'm only half joking.

I'm not sure it's even a joke. Going back to what I said before, look at what we know about Trump. He has no previous political experience and consequently a very low commitment to and understanding of democratic accountability. He hates the press. He resents being questioned. He views anything that is not legally mandated as completely optional. During and since the campaign he has avoided press conferences unless he had something to promote at them.

Given these facts, why would the Trump administration hold regular press briefings at all?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

10 hours ago, zelticgar said:

Politico just published a post mortem covering this topic. (someone may have already posted this). One large point in that article is that the DNC shifted funds away from some key states and pushed them to other areas to pump up the popular vote. There was fear that HRC would win the EC and lose the popular vote so the decision was made to invest in areas like Chicago and New Orleans while they puled money out of states like MI and MN. They also talk about how transfixed the campaign was with polling data at the expense of on the ground intelligence. 

This is strictly my theory from reading the article but i would guess there were some key decision makers who were overly confident in victory and used the opportunity to push money into areas that would benefit them professionally and personally versus helping win. Donna Brazile funneling money into Chicago is a good example. The theme of HRC allowing her inner circle to influence decisions not in her favor is a continual theme. She was surrounded by incompetents. 

Done reading it. And it kinda reinforced my believe, that the real blame lies with Hillary and her campaign. And also the term hubris from those leaked Powell mails comes to mind. She was too scared to lose the Popular vote, that she lost sight of the EC; the main objective? And she did not listen to people actually campaigning on her behalf in that state? One would expect the name Gore should have served as a warning of being to obsessed with of so important popular vote...

[SkynJay]

I came here to embed the latest Tweet from Trump, calling China's seizing of a U.S. drone 'unpresidented.'  But The tweet has already been deleted.  We know its not because he thought better of calling out China on social media, so it must be embarrassment over ignoring his phone's spell checker.

Stand by your words Trump!  You know your followers will insist that it was always spelled that way!

[Mexal]

7 minutes ago, SkynJay said:

I came here to embed the latest Tweet from Trump, calling China's seizing of a U.S. drone 'unpresidented.'  But The tweet has already been deleted.  We know its not because he thought better of calling out China on social media, so it must be embarrassment over ignoring his phone's spell checker.

Stand by your words Trump!  You know your followers will insist that it was always spelled that way!

He re-wrote it, this time spelling unprecedented correctly and removing an exclamation mark to sound more presidential. But yea, calling out China on twitter... jesus.

 

[SkynJay]

It should be unacceptable.  China and the US are in contact and had all expect to resolve this issue.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-16/pentagon-demands-china-return-an-intercepted-u-s-navy-vessel

So Mr. I don't need intelligence briefings decides it's more important to pander to his base, international politics be damned!

This really is a fucking nightmare.

[snake]

Quote

I honestly don't expect Trump to address it in any meaningful way. He will dismiss it and pivot to something else as he always does. I hope I am wrong. I want him to actually feel the responsibility and weight of his new position and rise to it, but I haven't seen indications of that yet. Instead we keep getting sad tweets and victory rallies so he can talk about how huge a winner he is.

I would not be surprised that he continues to challenge the CIA on this as long as Brennan is there.  Once his man Pompeo gets affirmed you might hear a different tune with regards to this story. 

[LongRider]

Why was Kurt Eichenwald targeted by twitter trolls?  Here is one reason, a series of tweets he published right before the election about his findings on Trump which he had made in while researching Trump for Newsweek.  They are storified here to make reading them easier.

https://storify.com/public/templates/card/index.html?src=//storify.com/clair3/kurt-eichenwald-s-tweets-listing-his-findings-from

[Ormond]

18 hours ago, Altherion said:

This is an interesting story, but, at heart, the maneuver is a legislative power grab made possible by the fact that the executive is leaving and would like to minimize the power of his successor. For Trump to gain more power, he would need Congress to do the opposite of the North Carolina legislature and cede power to him. It is very unlikely that they will do it.

And I think you are being naive. I think there is at least a 30% chance Congress would do this -- the same as Trump had of winning the election -- and that's a lot more than "very unlikely." Plus, unlike what happened in NC, this would occur piecemeal, making one small cession of power at a time, in terms of Congress and Trump, and Congress could be convinced of each separate issue without realizing the full implications. Finally, as Triskan points out, a big terrorist attack would be the perfect excuse for this to happen.

 

[Relic]

6 hours ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Trump hasn't held a single press conference in months. He's not going to give any response to the press corps, except for possibly some hand-picked syncophants.

Yup. Hannity will the the only "media" with access to the President soon, haha. And millions of people will find this perfectly acceptable. 

Oh America. You're so fucked.