iNow

This set of visuals really helps put it into perspective. Some archers are shooting on still days well lit and flat, while others are shooting into a hurricane in the dark from uneven terrain and yet are getting judged by the same standard. Teaching about privilege: https://www.boredpanda.com/lesson-about-privilege-awareness/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

Sometimes

I’m betting members themselves have, too. The rest of your post was mostly a bunch of judgey holier-than-thou buzzword salad that really had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual discussion taking place so I’ll ignore it. Probably

Try to remember that the Justices do more than just hear cases appealed to them. They’re also assigned regions across the US and given power to influence what happens at lower levels. It seems just yesterday, in fact, that now Kavanaugh has been put in charge of the Michigan circuit court, Barrett in charge of Wisconsin, Alito in charge of Pennsylvania, and Clarence Thomas in charge of Georgia (under Title 28 US code section 42). Could be nonsense, but worth remembering their power is about more than direct appeals on individual cases.

Hillary called Trump to concede on the same night as their election and their race was FAR closer than this one with Biden. Barrack Obama invited Trump to the WH a day or 2 later and made his entire team available to the incoming Trump admin to maximize their chances of quick success. Essentially every democratic leader and person with a national profile acknowledged Trumps win and congratulated him on his victory both privately and publicly. Nothing anywhere even remotely close to this has ever once happened before since George Washington as our very first president ever transitioned power to John Addams. Let’s not pretend for even one second that this is somehow a both sides issue.

Senator Mitt Romney from Utah (former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential nominee), but he’s basically all alone out by himself on an island in terms of Republican leadership or folks with a high profile speaking out. Tim DeWine the Republican Governor from Ohio and maybe a tiny handful of others you’ve never heard of have said this needs to stop. Republicans have made the calculation that this will all end soon enough anyway, and coming out against Trump right now does nothing other than to harm their chances of winning the next primary. Better to be silent than speak out at the cost of personal damage about something the system itself “should” rectify without further intervention from them.

That’s very on-brand for the Trump team

One analysis that resonated with me is that these court cases are just another part of the public relations campaign to add weight / heft in the public’s mind about these claims of fraud. The legal challenges are considered more credible even when dismissed because all people see are cases coming to the courts then they stop paying attention and don’t see them getting dismissed as laughable. They’re basically tweets with a filing fee

Overall, I suspect you're correct. With that said, Trump also learned an important lesson from an early age from one of his mentors, Roy Cohen (the lawyer who defended Joe McCarthy during the McCarthyism years in the US), that it doesn't actually matter what the law says. It only matters who the judge is. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/david-marcus/

And now after a call from Trump and an invitation to the WH, those election officials have filed an affidavit to rescind their votes in favor of certifying the election. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/politics/gop-michigan-results-trump/index.html

Confused isn’t the word that comes to my mind when describing Trumps behavior

Thank you. To them and to you

TBD

Two breaking stories right now. Trump fired his top cyber security expert after that expert debunked claims of election fraud. Also, two Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers in Michigan just voted against certifying their county’s results. This led to them being deadlocked in a 2-2 vote which would effectively block Detroit’s votes from being certified. Detroit is a majority minority community who overwhelmingly leans democratic

Lol...

Regardless of his state of mind or acknowledgment of reality, his corpse will still be scooped up and deposited somewhere which is not the White House on or before January 20th

Oyyy... to be continued

Health can be improved through better movement of the air and better circulation can reduce spread even if this movement doesn’t specifically kill the virus.

The Costco fans have all generally existed for years and well before covid

Republican senators are finally starting to push back on this. I expect it will begin soon, maybe even before the weekend is out. Not much, but it’s the public servants who’ve made this their life mission and who have been in government for decades who are organizing and sharing the information... not Trump or his closest sycophants... erm... advisors. And how do you get a dying elephant into a coffin? Very slowly and carefully.

My feelings on this topic are volatile and made harder by the way covid is moving though my community, but my take after a few days goes something like this: Trump knows he’s lost. He’s dragging things out as an act of theater for those who love him... like he’s fighting for them until the very end. Those supporters will reward him and continue giving money to “stop the steal” and this rage which he so expertly stokes will help them drive turnout in the Georgia runoffs in January. Keeping the embers of that rage hot also allows these individuals who dismiss all facts as fake news to be controlled by Trump and his allies for whatever other purposes they may wind up deeming helpful or fruitful to them later. As a possible side benefit, this obvious erosion of trust in the Democratic process itself that Trump keeps amplifying may inspire Russian oligarchs to thank him later by helping payoff or forgive his existing debts to them... he’s likely to gain lots of new friends offering him money in exchange for state secrets and insider information about US methods and sources, too. Republicans mostly know he’s leaving as well, but see no political benefit to themselves for pushing him out of the chair or speaking out... so they are silent and spineless. They can’t risk being considered anti-Trump by the base so waffle on about the right of candidates to challenge issues in the voting process and keep prattling about this all being normal... which it’s really not. Unless they’re already retired or about to retire from politics, they can’t afford to anger the base they’ve been enraging for over a decade if they hope to have any chance at a political career in the future of what is now Trumps Republican Party. ... but Trump will leave and he will likely start a new “news” network farther to the right of even Fox... propaganda undiluted and constrained will be piped into the fertile minds of willing and thirsty audiences. After all, his supporters are already lumping in Fox News with the rest of mainstream media and calling them a bunch of traitorous turncoats for simple things like calling the state or Arizona for Biden. They’re heeding the call of extreme right personalities and fleeing platforms Twitter and Facebook instead for far right “hate and bullshit are a-okay here!!” platforms like Parlor, and the information bubble is just getting thicker and more immune from piercing. Trump wants a larger share of the control of that walled off information ecosystem and more influence on this hardening bubble, and by refusing to acknowledge his loss to Biden he helps to further enable that. It helps keep him in the headlines, keeps people questioning news that doesn’t agree with their preferences, keeps them angry and donating money and showing up to vote, but it’s all just for show... catnip for the media... much like his recent leadership changes around national defense and justice. He knew it would deflect news attention away from him being a loser. I need to tighten up these thoughts a bit, but believe the outline above is pretty close to accurate.

Reporting suggests it was just another publicity stunt to help launch his own television network farther to the right than Fox News. He never expected to win or even go ice farther than the primary. We all apparently underestimated the stupidity and gullibility of the American voters.

He also supports putting US troops on the streets to control US citizens, be damned posse comitatus Also in fear that his approx $1B in debt to unnamed sources is coming due and he can’t simply declare bankruptcy as a way out of it

From a friend: “Within the last 48 hours the president has fired Mark Esper (for refusing to use American active duty forces suppress protests in Washington D.C.) and replaced him with someone he thinks will be more compliant with his requests to use the military against American people. He has also installed the previously Senate rejected Tony Tata as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for policy. Tata has made terrible anti Islamic statements, retweeteed QAnon nonsense, and is an unabashed Trump syncophant. Yesterday, the head of the DOJ's elections crimes division resigned in response to a memo from William Bar giving US Attorneys carte blanche to investigate - on their own initiative- allegations of voter fraud ... essentially turning the DOJ into an investigative arm of the Trump campaign. This afternoon, the Secretary of State said that President Trump would not step down and the only transition we would see was into a second Trump term. He went on to insinuate that the president's baseless allegations of fraud are enough to justify state legislatures appointing a slate of electors that break with the popular vote. This is really bad.” I agree. I’m no longer able to give the benefit of the doubt or discard my well informed intuitions as hysterical.

US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo further undermined trust in our democracy today when claiming that there’d be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration. I’m SO tired of these corrupt Jack offs still being in power.