US Politics: Butter Not Guns

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Er, Americans wouldn't know RC means Roman Catholic?

Did @TheMightyKC?

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The reception area at the building had these wooden boxes on the tables by the chairs, filled with loose cigarettes, for a visitor's pleasure. Our meeting was in a smallish conference room to one side, and the three of us were faced with 10 middle-aged white guys in suits, all of whom looked stressed and all of whom were chain-smoking in this fucking little room. Smoking in offices hadn't been banned yet. The VP of Environmental made his presentation and tried to reassure them we would take care of all of the clean-up on their property, quickly and without fuss, so no one could associate cigarettes and PCBs. He sort of said that as a joke, and sort of to stick a knife in them. The silence in the meeting, except for puff-puff-puffing, was hilarious. I don't know how we kept a straight face. For that matter, I'm not sure we all kept a straight face.

It's for anecdotes like this we should be allowed to give posts multiple emojis, as this is both funny and sad..and scary.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's for anecdotes like this we should be allowed to give posts multiple emojis, as this is both funny and sad..and scary.

Kind of makes you think about what qualifies drug use, right? 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Er, Americans wouldn't know RC means Roman Catholic?

I thoguht it was Remote Controled. I quite like the idea of the Pope playing with his remote and now push the pray button. Oh, not meat on Friday, which button was that again?

 

[Fragile Bird]

34 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I thoguht it was Remote Controled. I quite like the idea of the Pope playing with his remote and now push the pray button. Oh, not meat on Friday, which button was that again?

 

Not meat on Friday has been gone almost my entire life, lol!

[Fragile Bird]

As I suggested might happen in the previous thread, a second test of Gov. Mike DeWine has turned up negative. Presumably this means he’ll do a third test tomorrow to confirm the negative result.

[Zorral]

TRANSITION CRISIS
Getting from November to January
Niles Gilman
Wargaming shows that, short of a landslide victory for Joe Biden in the upcoming elections, we may be headed for a severe constitutional crisis. Here are six strategies for averting the worst outcomes.

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2020/08/06/getting-from-november-to-january/

Quote

 

I helped organize and participated in the Transition Integrity Project last December to assess and guard against the risk of irregularities in the November election. In June 2020, our group conducted scenario planning exercises to model different election scenarios: a big Trump win; a big Biden win; a Biden squeaker; and a truly ambiguous or uncertain result.
[....]
In the scenario exercises, which unfolded over a series of turns designed to simulate the period between November 4 and January 20, each team had a chance to make “moves,” which other teams would debate and counter, with the results adjudicated by a roll of the dice. Following methods common among military wargamers, disaster preparedness experts, and other policy planners, we designed this structure to uncover how the dynamic interactions between competing teams, as well as sheer luck, might produce unexpected results.

The bad news: in each scenario other than a Biden landslide, we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition. The good news: we also learned a great deal about how to prevent the worst from transpiring. There were six major takeaways.[MORE]

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

Ha!

I said that before, that whoever wins has to win in a landslide, or else there will be trouble.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ha!

I said that before, that whoever wins has to win in a landslide, or else there will be trouble.

"There's no way these election results can be real. Only a rigged election could make me lose by 10%!"

Big, small, either way he'll bitch if he loses, and his supporters will be as naked as their Emperor when they parrot what he says.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

"There's no way these election results can be real. Only a rigged election could make me lose by 10%!"

Big, small, either way he'll bitch if he loses, and his supporters will be as naked as their Emperor when they parrot what he says.

And just like that, Ty endorsed the Donald. Transition crisis averted.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

And just like that, Ty endorsed the Donald. Transition crisis averted.

You see @Hereward, that's how the progeny of actual Nazis can make fun of a Jew about how his country is flirting with going full fascist and I can laugh at it.  

[DMC]

Trump bitching about the election results, which of course is a given - even when he won he bitched about the results! - does not a constitutional crisis make.  These "simulations" trying to game out what will happen during the transition are rather sophomoric and conducted by a bunch of people (Granholm, Steele, Podesta, Frum, Kristol, Gupta) that spend most of their time these days sounding the alarm on Trump anyway.  Of course that's what their simulations are going to "conclude."  Any effort to establish a game tree on Trump's decision-making process based on the results is absurd on its face.  I'm sure Trump doesn't even have any idea exactly how he's going to react.  He's not only not a rational actor, nobody can reliably anticipate how exactly he'll act as an irrational actor.

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

Trump bitching about the election results, which of course is a given - even when he won he bitched about the results! - does not a constitutional crisis make.  These "simulations" trying to game out what will happen during the transition are rather sophomoric and conducted by a bunch of people (Granholm, Steele, Podesta, Frum, Kristol, Gupta) that spend most of their time these days sounding the alarm on Trump anyway.  Of course that's what their simulations are going to "conclude."  Any effort to establish a game tree on Trump's decision-making process based on the results is absurd on its face.  I'm sure Trump doesn't even have any idea exactly how he's going to react.  He's not only not a rational actor, nobody can reliably anticipate how exactly he'll act as an irrational actor.

Counterpoint:

The two biggest dangers that the scenario process uncovered were the possibility that a false “fraud” narrative could take hold, or violence in the streets could escalate. President Trump indeed appears to be laying the groundwork for both. Trump is already working to convince the public that the election results can’t be trusted. He’s started this campaign already by claiming that voting by mail will lead to voter fraud, a claim his own intelligence officials have consistently rejected. The President and rightwing online media personalities already have a well-established routine for generating and amplifying rumors and conspiracy theories. Much will depend on whether these fringe perspectives get picked up and uncritically reported or even endorsed by “mainstream” rightwing media such as Fox News or the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages. Now is not a time for Democrats to be complacent. They need to meet these narratives head-on, and early.

The possibility of political violence is also significant, both as a voter intimidation tactic in the runup to and day of the election, and in the aftermath, particularly if the result is contested. In several of our scenarios, militant groups on both right and left took to the streets to challenge political authorities. Some irresponsible parties are likely to propagate blood-curdling messages predicting and even calling for civil war should their side lose. Add to this the possibility that foreign troublemakers may once again try to stoke violent confrontations between different factions, and the situation is clearly combustible. For anyone who has studied the history of electoral violence in comparative international perspective, all the warning signs are flashing red that we are at grave risk of widespread civil unrest unless immediate action is taken.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Counterpoint

I'm not denying there will be a fraud narrative.  Again, that's obvious.  And I'm not denying there will likely be unrest-to-violence in the streets.  That's very likely as well, no matter the extent of Biden's victory.  But, those conditions do not create a "constitutional crisis."  If they did, then we've basically been in a constitutional crisis since January 20, 2017.  Which, I suppose is a fair argument, but doesn't warrant any elevated alarm.  Anyway, my main objection to that article is the pretentiousness of "gaming out" post-election scenarios by assigning a bunch of people to teams, rolling a dice, then writing an article like that exercise gave you any insight to anything.

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

we've basically been in a constitutional crisis since January 20, 2017. 

Why yes, we have been doh.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'm sure Trump doesn't even have any idea exactly how he's going to react.

Probably not, but as someone who has been teaching for a while now, you do know, when an awful spoiled brat in your class is going to react poorly to negative stimuli, yes? And that you have to plan for this? Especially when they have noticeable psychological problems?  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

26 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'm not denying there will be a fraud narrative.  Again, that's obvious.  And I'm not denying there will likely be unrest-to-violence in the streets.  

No dude, it's just about normalizing it.

Quote

But, those conditions do not create a "constitutional crisis."  If they did, then we've basically been in a constitutional crisis since January 20, 2017.  Which, I suppose is a fair argument

We've been in one for a lot longer than that.

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And that you have to plan for this? Especially when they have noticeable psychological problems?  

Uh, no, I've never really had a plan and never have been trained to beyond calling the medical center.  I don't see how you can create a "plan" to react to the uncertainty of behavior that is based on said psychological problems.  You can prepare to counteract voter suppression, and go public to make sure most people already know Trump is going to try to do this and that's a threat to democracy.  But conducting a little exercise they did doesn't yield any wisdom on what's going to happen.  It's a waste of time.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

No dude, it's just about normalizing it.

That ship sailed awhile ago.  Dude.

[sologdin]

with the results adjudicated by a roll of the dice.

am maybe seeing, potentially, a flaw in the suppleness here.