US Politics: Georgia on Our Minds

[Fragile Bird]

I am astonished to see how many lawyers are showing up on tv and saying making a case against Trump for that phone call would be tricky, because 1) he's all over the place, 2) he seems to believe what he's saying, and 3) nobody took up his suggestions.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

Two threads found next to each other on conservative Reddit:

1) Why are only Republican lawmakers dying of Covid? Something real fishy is going on here!

2) Joe Biden cancels inauguration parade because he’s afraid of Covid. What a pussy!

I have a guy on Facebook claiming Biden cancelled the parade because he knows he will not be inaugurated...

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I am astonished to see how many lawyers are showing up on tv and saying making a case against Trump for that phone call would be tricky, because 1) he's all over the place, 2) he seems to believe what he's saying, and 3) nobody took up his suggestions.

It is pretty amazing to me how often this defense is used, in multiple contexts. It's like people think that electoral fraud (whether it's pressuring the GA SoS or the Ukrainian PM) requires malicious intent, and thus the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to PROVE that Trump knows he's committing fraud.  It does not.  Even if you GENUINELY BELIEVE that Republicans have twin souls and thus their votes should count twice, that doesn't mean that attempting to make that a reality isn't fraud.

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

It is pretty amazing to me how often this defense is used, in multiple contexts. It's like people think that electoral fraud (whether it's pressuring the GA SoS or the Ukrainian PM) requires malicious intent, and thus the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to PROVE that Trump knows he's committing fraud.  It does not.  Even if you GENUINELY BELIEVE that Republicans have twin souls and thus their votes should count twice, that doesn't mean that attempting to make that a reality isn't fraud.

Wait, you're saying that just because I fervently believe that Padma Lakshmi is my wife that it is 'weird' and 'creepy' and 'wrong' to be laying in her bed waiting for her?

THE NERVE

GOOD DAY SIR

[Ormond]

17 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

When it comes to special covid treatments as President, sure. But money couldn’t halt Fred Trump’s slide into dementia, nor did it prevent Donald’s younger brother dying this year.

Fred Trump did not show obvious dementia symptoms until he was 87 years old, and Donald is now 74.

Honestly I don't find speculation that either Trump or Biden is likely to die or develop severed dementia within the next few years to be credible.

The life expectancy of the average 74 year old man in the USA is 11.8 years, and I think Trump's characteristics that would lower that (frequent anger, bad diet, etc.) are probably balanced out by those that would raise it (excellent medical care, never having smoked, etc.) so that the average seems the most reasonable guess for him. 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I believe there’s only so much balancing out one can do. Sure, he never smoked, never drank, and has access to excellent medical care....but he has an incredibly bad diet and does not exercise.

“Sitting (inactivity) is the new smoking” we often hear. 

He also was completely incoherent on that call with Raffensperger, often forgetting what day it was (referring to the GA election as “tomorrow” or “Monday”). My son said it was much like listening to his grandmother who has been diagnosed with dementia.

He has also been this way for about 8 years now in various interviews. 

And even if it is the case, it does not appear to affect his popularity in the slightest. 

[Ormond]

1 minute ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I believe there’s only so much balancing out one can do. Sure, he never smoked, never drank, and has access to excellent medical care....but he has an incredibly bad diet and does not exercise.

“Sitting (inactivity) is the new smoking” we often hear. 

He also was completely incoherent on that call with Raffensperger, often forgetting what day it was (referring to the GA election as “tomorrow” or “Monday”). My son said it was much like listening to his grandmother who has been diagnosed with dementia.

I just don't hear this as dementia, as a psychologist. It seems completely attributable to being an extreme narcissist under a huge amount of pressure because he is being told over and over again that he's a loser. 

[Guy Kilmore]

14 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I just don't hear this as dementia, as a psychologist. It seems completely attributable to being an extreme narcissist under a huge amount of pressure because he is being told over and over again that he's a loser. 

This.  Trump reminds me of clients who I engaged with you were diagnosed with NPD and under extreme stress.

[Mudguard]

33 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

It is pretty amazing to me how often this defense is used, in multiple contexts. It's like people think that electoral fraud (whether it's pressuring the GA SoS or the Ukrainian PM) requires malicious intent, and thus the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to PROVE that Trump knows he's committing fraud.  It does not.  Even if you GENUINELY BELIEVE that Republicans have twin souls and thus their votes should count twice, that doesn't mean that attempting to make that a reality isn't fraud.

Are you sure that electoral fraud does not have an intent requirement?  Generally, fraud normally has an intent requirement.  Most crimes have a criminal intent requirement, except for strict liability crimes like statutory rape.  Unless electoral fraud is a special case and is considered a strict liability crime in the US, there's likely an intent requirement.

[Maithanet]

3 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Are you sure that electoral fraud does not have an intent requirement?  Generally, fraud normally has an intent requirement.  Most crimes have a criminal intent requirement, except for strict liability crimes like statutory rape.  Unless electoral fraud is a special case and is considered a strict liability crime in the US, there's likely an intent requirement.

Here is the relevant federal statue that people are mostly talking about:

"A person who in any election for Federal office knowingly and willfully...attempts to...defraud the residents of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process" seems fairly straightforward to me.  I guess you could argue that "knowingly and willfully" means that if Trump genuinely believes (without evidence) that hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes were counted, that therefore no fraud has occurred.  But to me that sounds awfully similar to an insanity defense, namely that the defendant cannot be held liable for their actions because they are not capable of differentiating between nonsense claims and real ones. 

My understanding of fraud more generally is that defenses like that (or based on ignorance of the law) can be used on marginal cases, but that when the stakes get higher, the courts are much less lenient.  The stakes could hardly be higher in this case, and the President has access to the best legal minds in the country.  If he's acting illegally, he can hardly claim ignorance of the law (although Trump has used this defense as well). 

But (obviously) I'm not a lawyer. 

[Mudguard]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

Here is the relevant federal statue that people are mostly talking about:

"A person who in any election for Federal office knowingly and willfully...attempts to...defraud the residents of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process" seems fairly straightforward to me.  I guess you could argue that "knowingly and willfully" means that if Trump genuinely believes (without evidence) that hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes were counted, that therefore no fraud has occurred.  But to me that sounds awfully similar to an insanity defense, namely that the defendant cannot be held liable for their actions because they are not capable of differentiating between nonsense claims and real ones. 

My understanding of fraud more generally is that defenses like that (or based on ignorance of the law) can be used on marginal cases, but that when the stakes get higher, the courts are much less lenient.  The stakes could hardly be higher in this case, and the President has access to the best legal minds in the country.  If he's acting illegally, he can hardly claim ignorance of the law (although Trump has used this defense as well). 

But (obviously) I'm not a lawyer. 

Thanks for the link.  Yeah, that's definitely an intent requirement.  The intent requirement is not about whether he's aware of the law or not.  It's whether he knows he's lying about all the fraudulent vote claims he's making.  I think there's a strong case to be made that he knows he's constantly lying, that he's deliberately making or promoting false claims.  Otherwise you have to believe that he's a complete idiot to believe the things he's saying.  And while I'm sure I've called Trump an idiot many times, I don't actually think he has an intellectual disability.  He's just evil.  So even with the intent requirement, which does make it more difficult to prove in court, I still think he's guilty.

[Ormond]

13 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Thanks for the link.  Yeah, that's definitely an intent requirement.  The intent requirement is not about whether he's aware of the law or not.  It's whether he knows he's lying about all the fraudulent vote claims he's making.  I think there's a strong case to be made that he knows he's constantly lying, that he's deliberately making or promoting false claims.  Otherwise you have to believe that he's a complete idiot to believe the things he's saying.  And while I'm sure I've called Trump an idiot many times, I don't actually think he has an intellectual disability.  He's just evil.  So even with the intent requirement, which does make it more difficult to prove in court, I still think he's guilty.

I think the concept of "belief" about these things with an extreme narcissist authoritarian is sort of tricky. One of the defining features of authoritarianism is believing two contradictory things at the same time but not being able to see one's contradictions -- and that's because of emotional denial, not because of intellectual deficiency. I think Trump really does believe that he won and was cheated out of re-election, but his beliefs about how exactly his enemies accomplished that are going to be extremely fluid, so he's able to shift back and forth from moment to moment on whether or not he "believes" in voting machine tampering vs. signatures not matching, etc. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I have a QAnon crazy on FB claiming that Biden and Pence are dead and that they have been replaced by body doubles.

That’s a new one to me.

[Mudguard]

9 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I think the concept of "belief" about these things with an extreme narcissist authoritarian is sort of tricky. One of the defining features of authoritarianism is believing two contradictory things at the same time but not being able to see one's contradictions -- and that's because of emotional denial, not because of intellectual deficiency. I think Trump really does believe that he won and was cheated out of re-election, but his beliefs about how exactly his enemies accomplished that are going to be extremely fluid, so he's able to shift back and forth from moment to moment on whether or not he "believes" in voting machine tampering vs. signatures not matching, etc. 

As much as I'd like it, Trump is not going to be charged with electoral fraud.  In court, evidence would have to presented to satisfy the intent requirement.  Since Trump doesn't do email, it would likely have to be testimony from a witness that heard Trump state that he knew what he was alleging was false, but even this might have problems with the hearsay rule.  You might need recordings of such a statement, which might not exist.  So maybe the court case isn't that easy to prove.

I think Trump wanted to believe that he won, but he now knows that he lost and that all this is an effort at saving face so that he can assert for the rest of his life that he really won and that he never lost.  So many of the claims he constantly repeats have been thoroughly debunked.  It's clear that he doesn't care about the truth, and it's hard for me to believe that he actually really believes everything he's claiming.  

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

The next Attorney General needs to do his damn job and put him there. Anything less is unacceptable.

The Dems have so much they need to deal with that trying to bring shoggoth to federal justice right now is maybe not a good idea, particularly if he legally complicates matters by 'pardoning' himself with his packed SC. 

But Georgia, and other states in which he's committed and continues to commit crimes and continues to attempt corruption of other elected officials, state, rather than federal, should prosecute him relentlessly the moment he's outta that WH door.  Otherwise what he's done he'll continue to do and his wannabe shoggoths will be doing the same.  There's your civil war by coup by mafia tyranny. Crime and corruption and coups are the real trickle down.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/04/alexander-keyssar-historian-trump-call-electoral-college/

Quote

 

....Even if Republicans pursuing this tactic don’t believe it will overturn the election this time, Keyssar told me, they “are establishing its legitimacy....”

“A norm is being broken,” Keysser said, one in which Congress does not “monkey with a presidential election unless there is ample evidence and cause.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/04/senate-dirty-dozen-staging-coup-should-never-hold-office/

These representatives are doing what was done when Lincoln was elected (and recall in that election Lincoln was even allowed to be on the ballot in the southern states)-- and yet they expect to be seated in the House of government.  They are doing this despite we all hearing the shoggoth treasonably and illegally demanding a lawful election be overturned by the state of Georgia in his favor.  We HEAR him doing this.  They should not be seated, and he should be indicted again for impeachment,

I heard the noted historian Eric Foner say recently, "

Quote

"The history of the founding and settling of the United States, the War of the Rebellion and Reconstruction, as we were taught it, could not have produced the situation we are in today."

Dem voters terrified that historians and other experts are using a 'rhetoric of division' that will bring a second Civil War are showing themselves to be low history information voters, even though they vote the Dem column.  By not calling things what they are --

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/03/its-impeachable-its-likely-illegal-its-coup/

these actions are an attempted coup -- they bring on exactly what such voters for some reason fear will happen. It's sorta of like the superstition, don't name something because then it will arrive.

Quote

...There must be a response to a president who exploits his office for the purpose of overthrowing an election. The evidence is on tape. The next attorney general should move forward, if for no other reason, to deter further attempts at such reprehensible conduct. I would suggest impeachment as well, which could include a ban on holding office in the future...

Which is why it is infuriating when the media describes the content of Saturday's phone call to Georgia's Sec of State, "a potential criminal act" are again allowing shoggoth to land in the free space.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/10-former-defense-secretaries-military-peaceful-transfer-of-power/2021/01/03/2a23d52e-4c4d-11eb-a9f4-0e668b9772ba_story.html

This, despite every living former National Secretary of Defense needing to release to the military and the country their memo that the military must not be involved in deciding military matters.  Imagine the phones calls shoggot and his advisers and attorneys have been making to the military chiefs.  You know they have been, don't you.  There is not a single phone call of the sort made to Raffensberger -- there have been probably hundreds, to people in every state, every institution, every agency of the government, which promises punishment to them if they do not do as shoggoth demands, and "respect" if they do.

How more mafia than the don dangling 'respect' or 'death' can you get?

Just now I hear that the federal attorney for northern Georgia, appointed by shoggoth has resigned, giving no reason.  Guess he didn't do his job, and he's now dead.

[HoodedCrow]

No, no, I’m told that politicians are being implanted with lizard like aliens. Ever notice how Pence and Biden went to Roswell, New Mexico and were never the same? The only way to protect against aliens is to wear orange makeup and enormous shoulder pads. People say that Trump is saving the world from vicious liberals who have DNA from Alpha Centauri, so that is why anti Trump votes are fraudulent. The masks release nanobits of alien molecules to complete the process. 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

Are you sure that electoral fraud does not have an intent requirement?  Generally, fraud normally has an intent requirement.  Most crimes have a criminal intent requirement, except for strict liability crimes like statutory rape.  Unless electoral fraud is a special case and is considered a strict liability crime in the US, there's likely an intent requirement.

I would assume believing you won would be a mitigating factor, but still trying to manufacture that win through means other than actually counting all legally cast ballots is still going to be actionable as fraud. So the only real question is whether Trump's request to find those extra votes can reasonably be shown as an attempted inducement to fraud alongside a genuine belief he won. It could be argued that what he's asking is to actually find the legit uncounted votes he thinks exist that shows he really did win.

[Myshkin]

35 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I have a QAnon crazy on FB claiming that Biden and Pence are dead and that they have been replaced by body doubles.

That’s a new one to me.

Tell your FB buddy to do some fucking research. As HoodedCrow pointed out, Biden and Pence have been replace by shape shifting Lizard People. However, the Lizard People are decidedly NOT aliens, as some nutjobs continue to insist. The Lizard People are an ancient race who inhabit the bowels of the earth. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Alright, on the eve of the Georgia elections I am going to call it for the Democrats I think there has been enough early voting banked already, and I suspect Republican turnout will modestly drop, but just enough to push Warnock and Osoff over the edge. I think there has been too much mixed-messaging, which is the parallel narratives of massive fraud in the 2020 general, coupled with asking people to go out and vote for non-Trump goobers (basically waste their energy in a flawed enterprise for not-Trump candidates). Warnock +2 and Osoff +0.5 is my prediction.

On that note, Democrats have an asymmetric advantage in that the 'undecideds' almost always vote pretty late and on election day. I'd use the early banked votes advantage to then throw the kitchen sink at the Republican candidates (basically use the extra time they have to continually peel off those voters). Not sure why this isnt a defined strategy for them

[Hereward]

23 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

Tell your FB buddy to do some fucking research. As HoodedCrow pointed out, Biden and Pence have been replace by shape shifting Lizard People. However, the Lizard People are decidedly NOT aliens, as some nutjobs continue to insist. The Lizard People are an ancient race who inhabit the bowels of the earth. 

Aha, you have betrayed yourself, reptile boy, with your fake news. Every free born Anglo-Saxon knows the lizard people arrived from Alpha Draconis not the bowels of the Earth. You should not attempt to sully the words of the Blessed Icke. The bowels livers are the Atlanteans in exile, obviously.