January 6th Committee Hearings Thread of Dominance

[TwiceHorn 30852]

2 minutes ago, The Dog said:

tl;dw:

1. Although Fox is trying to dismiss it, it's getting harder.

2. These are all Trump's people going after him. Very hard to deflect that.  

RINOS!

[Leeroy Jenkins 2343]

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

RINOS!

Deep State.  Trump is the ONLY person who can save us!

[The Dog 43576]

5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

RINOS!

yeah as Georgia showed us that isn't really working anymore. 

the only thing it might feed is the persecution complex - but at some point for many (not all) it just gets to be too much. 

Edited June 14, 2022 by The Dog

[Blotto 23307]

Quote

The chairman of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol told reporters Monday that the panel will not make any criminal referral of former President Donald Trump or anyone else to the Justice Department -- a claim that met swift pushback from members of the panel.

"No, you know, we're going to tell the facts. If the Department of Justice looks at it, and assume that there's something that needs further review, I'm sure they'll do it," Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson said when asked whether the committee would refer Trump or others to the department.

Pressed again on whether the committee would ever make a formal referral to the Justice Department, the Mississippi Democrat said, "No, that's not our job. Our job is to look at the facts and circumstances around January 6, what caused it and make recommendations after that."

While Thompson drew the distinct line, his statement drew quick reactions from members of the committee, revealing the panel is split over how to handle a potential referral of the former President and his associates for prosecution. The committee this month is holding a series of hearings that are designed to show Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election results and the peaceful transfer of power.

Rep. Liz Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the committee, released a statement contradicting the chairman's comments. "The January 6th Select Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time," the Wyoming Republican tweeted.

The comment marked a rare public break between the two leaders of the committee.

A spokesperson for the committee told CNN in a statement that "the Select Committee has no authority to prosecute individuals, but is rather tasked with developing the facts surrounding the January 6th riot at the Capitol. Right now, the committee is focused on presenting our findings to the American people in our hearings and in our report. Our investigation is ongoing and we will continue to gather all relevant information as we present facts, offer recommendations and, if warranted, make criminal referrals."

Committee member Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, appeared surprised later Monday when asked about the chairman's comments.

"You know, I haven't seen the chairman's statements," Schiff told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "We haven't had a discussion about that, so I don't know that the committee has reached a position on whether we make a referral or what the referrals might be. I thought we were deferring that decision until we concluded our investigation. At least that's my understanding."

How they could not have a had a discussion about this topic? Its fair to assume that until the hearings are complete they wont know whether its necessary to make a referral. But thats not what Thompson is saying. I would hope that everyone on the committee could at least be on the same page when it comes to the overall purpose of these hearings, but congressional leadership never fails to underwhelm me.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Blotto

[RomaVicta 29595]

37 minutes ago, horn4life said:

What I think is most fascinating about the January 6th Committees investigation and finding of fact, is that nearly every single Republican you know will have avoided watching it, and would ALWAYS prefer to believe a LIE than to believe an actual truth that goes against their delusion based reality.

Nothing is going to change that.  And that is fucking scary as shit.  Republicans now largely do not have a basis of fact to base decision making on.  They avoid facts, and instead prefer endless "what about" musings based on non-fact based falsehoods.  I wish as a whole rank and file Republicans had a better grasp of history.  Because for those of us that were fascinated as kids about WWII and the origins, the ability to suspend reality, and find false grievances to rally around.  That's exactly how a former German elected official, became a dictator.  The similarities in the US today among a certain demographic of our country are scary to me.  They will believe almost any falsehood.  And that can be very, very dangerous to a Democracy.

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

It's really kind of a macrocosm of this place.  The righties can't come into Cloak Room and make much of a coherent defense of Trump or  Republicans.  They just bring in talking points and memes and run away when pantsed.

Tucker told us the truth.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13489]

10 minutes ago, The Dog said:

2. These are all Trump's people going after him. Very hard to deflect that.  

More specifically, the ones who testify under oath. The ones who refused to testify under oath are defending Trump in the media.

[RomaVicta 29595]

3 minutes ago, Blotto said:

How they could not have a had a discussion about this topic? Its fair to assume that until the hearings are complete they wont know whether its necessary to make a referral. But thats not what Thompson is saying. I would hope that everyone on the committee could at least be on the same page when it comes to the overall purpose of these hearings, congressional leadership never fails to underwhelm me.

The committee has been very careful in its presentation to appear neither biased nor bloodthirsty. I think it's wise to say prosecution is not the aim. I think it's fine for the GOP member of the committee to express a more hawkish position. 

Thompson's remarks are not binding. He also may be speaking from the heart about his intention. 

The press asking the question, likely over and over, is akin to sports reporters repeatedly asking an AD if he's going to fire the coach during the season or asking a coach if he's considering leaving before a season is over. There's a proper time for that announcement which does not have to bend because a reporter can't think of a better question.

Answering a question about the future will have impact on the present in these instances. ADs and coaches want to focus on the present season. Thompson wants the focus on the investigation not what may result from it.

If he says, "hell yes, we're going to suggest charges," then the focus of the lazy often dull TV media will switch to endless panel shows discussing what the possible charges may be instead of actually covering the news of what is actually happening. 

[Red Five 40467]

2 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

If he says, "hell yes, we're going to suggest charges," then the focus of the lazy often dull TV media will switch to endless panel shows discussing what the possible charges may be instead of actually covering the news of what is actually happening. 

It would also be a bit of a spoiler to the viewers. 

[bolverk 29121]

Not sure if this is the right place, but this thread is the one getting the traffic. The author below reminds us in clear and compelling terms that NONE of Trump's attempts to tamper with the election would've been possible without our dumbass Electoral College system for determining a presidential election.

 

The Other Cause of January 6
Without the Electoral College, America would never have come so close to an overthrow of its government.

John Eastman. Rudy Giuliani. Donald Trump himself.

These people all bear some responsibility for the events of January 6, 2021. But there is another contributing factor—an institution, not a person—whose role is regularly overlooked, and that deserves a focus in the ongoing January 6 committee hearings: the Electoral College. The Electoral College isn’t responsible for President Trump’s efforts to remain in office despite his clear loss. But it was integral to Trump’s strategy, and it has everything to do with how close he came to success.

Many Americans understand that the country’s anachronistic system of presidential selection, part constitutional and part statutory, can sometimes produce a winner who does not receive the most votes nationwide. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 3 million, but lost in the Electoral College 304–227. Sixteen years earlier, Al Gore won 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush nationwide, but Bush prevailed in the Electoral College 271–266 after the Supreme Court functionally awarded him Florida’s electoral votes. And even without Trump’s machinations, the 2020 election came dangerously close to producing yet again a president who did not win the national popular vote. Joe Biden won approximately 7 million more votes than Trump, and prevailed in the Electoral College 306–232, but just 44,000 additional Trump votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin could have resulted in a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. If that had happened, the House, voting by state delegation, would almost certainly have anointed Trump president despite his second popular-vote loss.

But there’s a problem with the Electoral College that’s distinct from the fact that it sometimes selects a winner who does not receive the most votes nationwide, and from the way it creates a political process that overvalues the concerns of voters in an arbitrary subset of states, increasing polarization, dysfunction, and division. (I elaborate on these dynamics in a recent essay in the Michigan Law Review, as does Jesse Wegman in the book that’s the subject of my essay, Let the People Pick the President.) The problem is this: The Electoral College today is dangerously susceptible to manipulation. Indeed, as 2020 showed, the complex process through which a candidate becomes president contains a number of postelection opportunities to contest or undermine the results of an election—and to do so for reasons purportedly having to do with law and legal process.

Consider the Trump campaign’s many lawsuits designed to delay state certification beyond the “safe harbor” deadline created by the Electoral Count Act, after which a state’s slate of electors is no longer deemed conclusive in the event of a dispute. Or Trump supporters’ efforts to disrupt the statutorily required meetings at which each state’s electors actually cast their votes, and the attempts of ersatz “Trump electors” to lay the groundwork for later challenges to official state slates. Trump also personally pressured state election officials to change election results by “finding” enough additional votes that he would be entitled to all of the state’s electoral votes. Trump loyalists in the Department of Justice, and Trump supporters such as Ginni Thomas, sought to push state legislatures to take the radical step of throwing out state returns on the basis of spurious fraud claims and appointing Trump electors themselves. Trump and at least one of his attorneys sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes from a number of states in which Biden received more votes, pointing to the vice president’s central role in “counting” electoral votes in the last stage of the Electoral College process created by the Twelfth Amendment. When that failed, what became the January 6 attack on the Capitol was an effort to disrupt that final event in the Electoral College timeline.

Put plainly, for a candidate determined to win at all costs, the Electoral College was central to a postelection strategy designed to convert loss into victory. Last night’s opening hearings of the January 6 committee made clear that Trump and his advisers were well aware no good-faith legal basis existed to dispute the election’s results. In a nationwide popular vote, a deficit of 7 million votes would have been impossible to challenge using ostensibly lawful means; the fact of the Electoral College meant that flipping a few close states, or coercing the vice president into throwing out those states’ votes,  would have been enough to change the election’s outcome.

It also seems likely that the very existence of the Electoral College made the public more susceptible to Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy—or at least lulled the public for a time into believing there was nothing wildly wrong with a process in which a defeated candidate exploited pressure points in an attempt to cling to power. Americans are, after all, acclimated to an undemocratic system of presidential selection; perhaps that primed the public to respond in muted ways to Trump’s blatantly antidemocratic moves.

Commonplace political rhetoric about presidential elections suggests as much, framing elections more as complex logic games than crucial acts of self-governance. We discuss “paths to 270”; we contemplate the prospect of things like “running up the score in Broward County.”

It is tempting to dismiss the events of January 6 as largely about Donald Trump rather than our system more broadly. And certainly, any electoral system can be targeted by an autocrat determined to hang on to power. But the Electoral College both provided numerous points of entry and brought the country dangerously close to an actual successful coup.

A genuine bipartisan legislative effort is now under way to reform some of the aspects of the Electoral Count Act that Trump sought to exploit in 2020, as well as to address a number of other vulnerabilities of our electoral system. But at the moment, insufficient attention is being paid to the Electoral College itself. One of the goals of these hearings should be to communicate to the public just how dangerous an institution the Electoral College is—and perhaps to galvanize a serious effort to change it.

[4th&Five 41274]

I’m already dreading the Father’s Day conversation this weekend with this going on. I may fake Covid. 

[Blotto 23307]

8 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

The committee has been very careful in its presentation to appear neither biased nor bloodthirsty. I think it's wise to say prosecution is not the aim. I think it's fine for the GOP member of the committee to express a more hawkish position. 

Thompson's remarks are not binding. He also may be speaking from the heart about his intention. 

The press asking the question, likely over and over, is akin to sports reporters repeatedly asking an AD if he's going to fire the coach during the season or asking a coach if he's considering leaving before a season is over. There's a proper time for that announcement which does not have to bend because a reporter can't think of a better question.

Answering a question about the future will have impact on the present in these instances. ADs and coaches want to focus on the present season. Thompson wants the focus on the investigation not what may result from it.

If he says, "hell yes, we're going to suggest charges," then the focus of the lazy often dull TV media will switch to endless panel shows discussing what the possible charges may be instead of actually covering the news of what is actually happening. 

But that's not what Thompson said. He said that the panel will not make any criminal referral of former President Donald Trump or anyone else to the Justice Department. If he feels that there is any chance that the outcome of the proceedings will merit a criminal referral, and he wants to leave the option of said criminal referral as a possibility, thats an odd statement to make. Its a logical question for reporters to ask, and I would hope its not too much for the members of the committee to appear to be on the same page. But knowing congress, they probably arent on the same page, which led to my original post. 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Blotto

[TwiceHorn 30852]

20 minutes ago, Blotto said:

How they could not have a had a discussion about this topic? Its fair to assume that until the hearings are complete they wont know whether its necessary to make a referral. But thats not what Thompson is saying. I would hope that everyone on the committee could at least be on the same page when it comes to the overall purpose of these hearings, but congressional leadership never fails to underwhelm me.

Well, as DDD Dad pointed out, a consideration for the Committee is avoiding any inference of a "law-enforcement purpose," which would tend to invalidate their subpoenas.  Any "premature" talk of that would have fed into that argument, which has been made at every turn by subpoena deponents, and, thankfully, roundly rebuffed by the courts, in no small part because the Committee has largely kept it's mouth shut regarding same.

A criminal referral is unnecessary to initiate a criminal investigation.  It is also superfluous, as the DOJ doesn't have to do anything with it.

Still, they should have reached a consensus for public consumption.

[DaysOff 7698]

Without the Electoral College there'd never be another Republican president.

[Blotto 23307]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, as DDD Dad pointed out, a consideration for the Committee is avoiding any inference of a "law-enforcement purpose," which would tend to invalidate their subpoenas.  Any "premature" talk of that would have fed into that argument, which has been made at every turn by subpoena deponents, and, thankfully, roundly rebuffed by the courts, in no small part because the Committee has largely kept it's mouth shut regarding same.

A criminal referral is unnecessary to initiate a criminal investigation.  It is also superfluous, as the DOJ doesn't have to do anything with it.

Still, they should have reached a consensus for public consumption.

And that was really my point. 

[Red Five 40467]

8 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Joe Biden won approximately 7 million more votes than Trump, and prevailed in the Electoral College 306–232, but just 44,000 additional Trump votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin could have resulted in a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. If that had happened, the House, voting by state delegation, would almost certainly have anointed Trump president despite his second popular-vote loss.

Biden almost lost an election in which he won the vote by the combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Montana. 

[TwiceHorn 30852]

11 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Not sure if this is the right place, but this thread is the one getting the traffic. The author below reminds us in clear and compelling terms that NONE of Trump's attempts to tamper with the election would've been possible without our dumbass Electoral College system for determining a presidential election.

 

The Other Cause of January 6
Without the Electoral College, America would never have come so close to an overthrow of its government.

John Eastman. Rudy Giuliani. Donald Trump himself.

These people all bear some responsibility for the events of January 6, 2021. But there is another contributing factor—an institution, not a person—whose role is regularly overlooked, and that deserves a focus in the ongoing January 6 committee hearings: the Electoral College. The Electoral College isn’t responsible for President Trump’s efforts to remain in office despite his clear loss. But it was integral to Trump’s strategy, and it has everything to do with how close he came to success.

Many Americans understand that the country’s anachronistic system of presidential selection, part constitutional and part statutory, can sometimes produce a winner who does not receive the most votes nationwide. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 3 million, but lost in the Electoral College 304–227. Sixteen years earlier, Al Gore won 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush nationwide, but Bush prevailed in the Electoral College 271–266 after the Supreme Court functionally awarded him Florida’s electoral votes. And even without Trump’s machinations, the 2020 election came dangerously close to producing yet again a president who did not win the national popular vote. Joe Biden won approximately 7 million more votes than Trump, and prevailed in the Electoral College 306–232, but just 44,000 additional Trump votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin could have resulted in a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. If that had happened, the House, voting by state delegation, would almost certainly have anointed Trump president despite his second popular-vote loss.

But there’s a problem with the Electoral College that’s distinct from the fact that it sometimes selects a winner who does not receive the most votes nationwide, and from the way it creates a political process that overvalues the concerns of voters in an arbitrary subset of states, increasing polarization, dysfunction, and division. (I elaborate on these dynamics in a recent essay in the Michigan Law Review, as does Jesse Wegman in the book that’s the subject of my essay, Let the People Pick the President.) The problem is this: The Electoral College today is dangerously susceptible to manipulation. Indeed, as 2020 showed, the complex process through which a candidate becomes president contains a number of postelection opportunities to contest or undermine the results of an election—and to do so for reasons purportedly having to do with law and legal process.

Consider the Trump campaign’s many lawsuits designed to delay state certification beyond the “safe harbor” deadline created by the Electoral Count Act, after which a state’s slate of electors is no longer deemed conclusive in the event of a dispute. Or Trump supporters’ efforts to disrupt the statutorily required meetings at which each state’s electors actually cast their votes, and the attempts of ersatz “Trump electors” to lay the groundwork for later challenges to official state slates. Trump also personally pressured state election officials to change election results by “finding” enough additional votes that he would be entitled to all of the state’s electoral votes. Trump loyalists in the Department of Justice, and Trump supporters such as Ginni Thomas, sought to push state legislatures to take the radical step of throwing out state returns on the basis of spurious fraud claims and appointing Trump electors themselves. Trump and at least one of his attorneys sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes from a number of states in which Biden received more votes, pointing to the vice president’s central role in “counting” electoral votes in the last stage of the Electoral College process created by the Twelfth Amendment. When that failed, what became the January 6 attack on the Capitol was an effort to disrupt that final event in the Electoral College timeline.

Put plainly, for a candidate determined to win at all costs, the Electoral College was central to a postelection strategy designed to convert loss into victory. Last night’s opening hearings of the January 6 committee made clear that Trump and his advisers were well aware no good-faith legal basis existed to dispute the election’s results. In a nationwide popular vote, a deficit of 7 million votes would have been impossible to challenge using ostensibly lawful means; the fact of the Electoral College meant that flipping a few close states, or coercing the vice president into throwing out those states’ votes,  would have been enough to change the election’s outcome.

It also seems likely that the very existence of the Electoral College made the public more susceptible to Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy—or at least lulled the public for a time into believing there was nothing wildly wrong with a process in which a defeated candidate exploited pressure points in an attempt to cling to power. Americans are, after all, acclimated to an undemocratic system of presidential selection; perhaps that primed the public to respond in muted ways to Trump’s blatantly antidemocratic moves.

Commonplace political rhetoric about presidential elections suggests as much, framing elections more as complex logic games than crucial acts of self-governance. We discuss “paths to 270”; we contemplate the prospect of things like “running up the score in Broward County.”

It is tempting to dismiss the events of January 6 as largely about Donald Trump rather than our system more broadly. And certainly, any electoral system can be targeted by an autocrat determined to hang on to power. But the Electoral College both provided numerous points of entry and brought the country dangerously close to an actual successful coup.

A genuine bipartisan legislative effort is now under way to reform some of the aspects of the Electoral Count Act that Trump sought to exploit in 2020, as well as to address a number of other vulnerabilities of our electoral system. But at the moment, insufficient attention is being paid to the Electoral College itself. One of the goals of these hearings should be to communicate to the public just how dangerous an institution the Electoral College is—and perhaps to galvanize a serious effort to change it.

Well, we can stop whinging about the EC, because it's not going away.

The Electoral Count Act, on the other hand, could probably use some fine tuning, and that's slightly more in the realm of possibility.

We could also probably use (and you'll probably never, ever catch me saying this again) some new or revised/amended criminal laws directed to this kind of shit.

[TwiceHorn 30852]

3 minutes ago, Blotto said:

And that was really my point. 

I actually probably should have quoted Roma, because I was intending to elaborate on that as well as your post.

[Chad Fuck 17353]

5 minutes ago, DaysOff said:

Without the Electoral College there'd never be another Republican president.

I have no problem with this, as the GOP has become a malignant cancer upon our Republic. 

If the end result was to drive candidates towards the middle rather than the fringes, so much the better.

[Tuco 5066]

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, we can stop whinging about the EC, because it's not going away.

The Electoral Count Act, on the other hand, could probably use some fine tuning, and that's slightly more in the realm of possibility.

We could also probably use (and you'll probably never, ever catch me saying this again) some new or revised/amended criminal laws directed to this kind of shit.

Which is (or should be) the point of Congressional hearings - determining why a shitty thing happened so you craft laws that reduce the possibility of a repeat in the future.  

Criminal charges are not the goal.

(Not directed at Twice.)

[Jive Turkey 12467]

hearing tomorrow postponed.  rumors on Twitter that SCOTUS is going to release a bombshell opinion tomorrow which will dominate the news cycle.

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Jive Turkey

[Red Five 40467]

3 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

rumors on Twitter that SCOTUS is going to release a bombshell opinion tomorrow which will dominate the news cycle.

Ooh ooh I know. 

[RomaVicta 29595]

So, the GOP dominated Supreme Court wants to make a huge ruling in the middle of the Jan 6 hearings? Is there a reason the ruling must be made right now? 

I can't imagine having this thought just 5 or 6 years ago. The GOP must be shitting bricks over what's coming out and whatever their polling is telling them. So, go ahead and make a call to the Supreme Court or maybe just to Mrs. Justice Clarence Thomas.

We're banana! What fruit is your republic?

Edited June 14, 2022 by RomaVicta

[jimmyjazz 45228]

29 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Ooh ooh I know. 

 

[Blotto 23307]

20 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

So, the GOP dominated Supreme Court wants to make a huge ruling in the middle of the Jan 6 hearings? Is there a reason the ruling must be made right now?

Probably officially recognizing mango-colored americans as a protected species, free from criminal prosecution. Its about time our mangamericans are recognized for their efforts in making america great again. 

[elfenix 34143]

hearing tomorrow postponed.  rumors on Twitter that SCOTUS is going to release a bombshell opinion tomorrow which will dominate the news cycle.
 

They already pushed back their NY gun opinion. So could be that. Not sure how much additional chatter the Jackson Health opinion could generate.

[Hagbard Celine 10572]

2 hours ago, Blotto said:

How they could not have a had a discussion about this topic? Its fair to assume that until the hearings are complete they wont know whether its necessary to make a referral. But thats not what Thompson is saying. I would hope that everyone on the committee could at least be on the same page when it comes to the overall purpose of these hearings, but congressional leadership never fails to underwhelm me.

no plan survives contact with the enemy

in the last 48 hours:

- pravda started showing the hearings of the tapeworm's closest people jumping like rats off a sinking ship

- tapeworm puts out a panic-induced 12-page screed requiring reprogramming of the simulation

- committee decides to pause (postpone tomorrows hearing) because they can, which means it's too their benefit to let the stirred shitstorm subsist

with 18 months of runway, i have no doubt that the smartest minds at the naked owl dance financed TOP MEN (and WIMMENS) to game this out and we are seeing a masterful strategery unfold

[Brisketexan 103785]

7 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

i have no doubt that the smartest minds at the naked owl dance financed TOP MEN (and WIMMENS) to game this out and we are seeing a masterful strategery unfold

[The Dog 43576]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/conflicting-explanations-wednesdays-jan-committee-hearing-abruptly-postponed/story?id=85381712

Hearing postponed due to "scheduling demands". 

They needed a break. 

[Hagbard Celine 10572]

2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, as DDD Dad pointed out, a consideration for the Committee is avoiding any inference of a "law-enforcement purpose," which would tend to invalidate their subpoenas.  Any "premature" talk of that would have fed into that argument, which has been made at every turn by subpoena deponents, and, thankfully, roundly rebuffed by the courts, in no small part because the Committee has largely kept it's mouth shut regarding same.

A criminal referral is unnecessary to initiate a criminal investigation.  It is also superfluous, as the DOJ doesn't have to do anything with it.

Still, they should have reached a consensus for public consumption.

strategy: slowly entice murdoch with a piece of cheese he can't resist

tactic: float the "no indictments, it's safe to show the hearings, it's all just theater...."

SPROING

 

[horn4life 3749]

2 hours ago, 4th&Five said:

I’m already dreading the Father’s Day conversation this weekend with this going on. I may fake Covid. 

Odds are if there are more than 10 people there at Father's Day and you all take covid tests I would almost bet you get at least one positive.  I am sitting at home right now with covid, but it's mild like a cold.  But extremely contagious.  Me, wife, daughter from out of town, and TBD since I tested positive Sunday.  

So maybe you won't have to fake at all!  If you nose is runny, maybe give it a little wipe before the handshake with the FIL.  (JUST KIDDING!!!)

[4th&Five 41274]

43 minutes ago, horn4life said:

Odds are if there are more than 10 people there at Father's Day and you all take covid tests I would almost bet you get at least one positive.  I am sitting at home right now with covid, but it's mild like a cold.  But extremely contagious.  Me, wife, daughter from out of town, and TBD since I tested positive Sunday.  

So maybe you won't have to fake at all!  If you nose is runny, maybe give it a little wipe before the handshake with the FIL.  (JUST KIDDING!!!)

Asking either of my folks to take a covid test at this point would be worse than 1/6 talk.

[Satchel 6908]

5 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, we can stop whinging about the EC, because it's not going away.

The Electoral Count Act, on the other hand, could probably use some fine tuning, and that's slightly more in the realm of possibility.

We could also probably use (and you'll probably never, ever catch me saying this again) some new or revised/amended criminal laws directed to this kind of shit.

It almost went away in 1969 because American sentiment strongly favored abolishing the EC. 55-60% of us still want to do away with it:

https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-nearly-abolished-thurmond
On September 18, 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 338 to 70 to send a constitutional amendment to the Senate that would have dismantled the Electoral College, the indirect system by which Americans elect the president and vice president.

“It was the only time in American history that a chamber of Congress actually approved an amendment to abolish the Electoral College,” says Jesse Wegman, a member of the New York Timeseditorial board and author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.

The House vote, which came in the wake of an extraordinarily close presidential election, mirrored national sentiment about scrapping an electoral system that allowed a candidate to win the presidency even while losing the popular vote. A 1968 Gallup poll found that 80 percent of Americans believed it was time to elect the nation’s highest office by direct popular vote.

Yet just a year later, the Senate bill that would have ended the Electoral College was dead in the water, filibustered by a cadre of Southern lawmakers intent on preserving the majority’s grip on electoral power in their states. Despite widespread bipartisan support for the amendment in both large and small states, the Senate came five votes shy of breaking the filibuster.

[Beau Vine 53742]

I like how Dinesh was so apoplectic on twitter about Barr questioning his sanity and integrity that he kept urging people to watch his movie "to see for themselves."  <checks notes> While still charging $19.99.

[Blotto 23307]

15 minutes ago, Satchel said:

It almost went away in 1969 because American sentiment strongly favored abolishing the EC. 55-60% of us still want to do away with it:

https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-nearly-abolished-thurmond
On September 18, 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 338 to 70 to send a constitutional amendment to the Senate that would have dismantled the Electoral College, the indirect system by which Americans elect the president and vice president.

“It was the only time in American history that a chamber of Congress actually approved an amendment to abolish the Electoral College,” says Jesse Wegman, a member of the New York Timeseditorial board and author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.

The House vote, which came in the wake of an extraordinarily close presidential election, mirrored national sentiment about scrapping an electoral system that allowed a candidate to win the presidency even while losing the popular vote. A 1968 Gallup poll found that 80 percent of Americans believed it was time to elect the nation’s highest office by direct popular vote.

Yet just a year later, the Senate bill that would have ended the Electoral College was dead in the water, filibustered by a cadre of Southern lawmakers intent on preserving the majority’s grip on electoral power in their states. Despite widespread bipartisan support for the amendment in both large and small states, the Senate came five votes shy of breaking the filibuster.

Interesting. I had no idea that even transpired.

 

Southern senators you say. Crazy how the party affiliation in the south is so different these days. 

[sidis 9676]

2 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Southern senators you say. Crazy how the party affiliation in the south is so different these days. 

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/26/what-we-get-wrong-about-southern-strategy/

[gmr548 16322]

It almost went away in 1969 because American sentiment strongly favored abolishing the EC. 55-60% of us still want to do away with it:

https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-nearly-abolished-thurmond
On September 18, 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 338 to 70 to send a constitutional amendment to the Senate that would have dismantled the Electoral College, the indirect system by which Americans elect the president and vice president.

“It was the only time in American history that a chamber of Congress actually approved an amendment to abolish the Electoral College,” says Jesse Wegman, a member of the New York Timeseditorial board and author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.

The House vote, which came in the wake of an extraordinarily close presidential election, mirrored national sentiment about scrapping an electoral system that allowed a candidate to win the presidency even while losing the popular vote. A 1968 Gallup poll found that 80 percent of Americans believed it was time to elect the nation’s highest office by direct popular vote.

Yet just a year later, the Senate bill that would have ended the Electoral College was dead in the water, filibustered by a cadre of Southern lawmakers intent on preserving the majority’s grip on electoral power in their states. Despite widespread bipartisan support for the amendment in both large and small states, the Senate came five votes shy of breaking the filibuster.

Never knew that. My oh my what a different world we’d live in today.

The only marginally possible way to scrap the EC is to get the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact passed in states with 270 EV’s. Of course, almost every state one could say has a reasonable chance at electing a Democratic trifecta in the foreseeable future has passed it already, and even adding NV, MN, VA, NH, and ME only gets you to 232. Beyond that you’re looking for some combo of gerrymandered swing states to not only elect Democratic trifectas but pass a law forfeiting the massive amount of power they have in the system.

A constitutional amendment isn’t even worth discussing. Full scale civil war and an outright breakup of this nation, unlikely as it may be, is more likely than getting 38 states to ratify an amendmen at this point.

[Satchel 6908]

It’s interesting to note that in the face of tremendous social change/progress occurring since 1969, there has been an undeniable weakening of the social compact that has governed us for a good portion of our history.

[Brisketexan 103785]

It’s interesting to note that in the face of tremendous social change/progress occurring since 1969, there has been an undeniable weakening of the social compact that has governed us for a good portion of our history.

Sure it has. Because the “treat everyone decently, because we’re all in this together” ethos falls to shit when the in-group realizes that “everyone” now includes black people, messicans, and the queers. The social contract was a lot easier when it had the “minorities and queers and such need not apply” exclusion. Now that there’s an expectation that all are included? Well, f that social contract.

[Chewy's Hairy Horn 867]

6 hours ago, elfenix said:

7 hours ago, Jive Turkey said:

hearing tomorrow postponed.  rumors on Twitter that SCOTUS is going to release a bombshell opinion tomorrow which will dominate the news cycle.
 

They already pushed back their NY gun opinion. So could be that. Not sure how much additional chatter the Jackson Health opinion could generate.

Guess it could be giving space for the whole Boebert Cruz escort story to breath.  

[WhatTheBuck 28643]

8 hours ago, DaysOff said:

Without the Electoral College there'd never be another Republican president.

Well, there would be, they’d just need to change their party ideology to better reflect the will of the majority and not just the interests of a narrow few. 

[Hagbard Celine 10572]

man the stakes are getting higher by the hour.....

 

fox decides to air the hearings....

tapeworm counters with his screed.....

supremes decide to cut the jib out of the wind.....

committee says HA fuck you we'll just hold for now thank you.....

then our side says "you want virtuous women?"

we'll raise you a whore.....   in Congress......

your move fascists

Edited June 14, 2022 by Hagbard Celine
tapeworM not tapework

[horn4life 3749]

Electoral College founding Fathers constitutional convention

 

Electoral College: A System Born of Compromise

At the time of the Philadelphia convention, no other country in the world directly elected its chief executive, so the delegates were wading into uncharted territory. Further complicating the task was a deep-rooted distrust of executive power. After all, the fledgling nation had just fought its way out from under a tyrannical king and overreaching colonial governors. They didn’t want another despot on their hands.

One group of delegates felt strongly that Congress shouldn’t have anything to do with picking the president. Too much opportunity for chummy corruption between the executive and legislative branches.

Another camp was dead set against letting the people elect the president by a straight popular vote. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts. Second, they feared a headstrong “democratic mob” steering the country astray. And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power.  Out of those drawn-out debates came a compromise based on the idea of electoral intermediaries. These intermediaries wouldn’t be picked by Congress or elected by the people. Instead, the states would each appoint independent “electors” who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency.

Sort of interesting to me that one of the main reasons for the electoral college has had the exact opposite effect as intended. As with greater and greater percentages of populations in fewer states the rural states where they feared the uninformed grew in electoral power.  

Edited June 15, 2022 by horn4life

[WhatTheBuck 28643]

“And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power.”

Yeah, that could be bad. Good thing the Electoral College prevented that.

Oh, wait.. 

[TwiceHorn 30852]

11 hours ago, horn4life said:

Electoral College founding Fathers constitutional convention

 

Electoral College: A System Born of Compromise

At the time of the Philadelphia convention, no other country in the world directly elected its chief executive, so the delegates were wading into uncharted territory. Further complicating the task was a deep-rooted distrust of executive power. After all, the fledgling nation had just fought its way out from under a tyrannical king and overreaching colonial governors. They didn’t want another despot on their hands.

One group of delegates felt strongly that Congress shouldn’t have anything to do with picking the president. Too much opportunity for chummy corruption between the executive and legislative branches.

Another camp was dead set against letting the people elect the president by a straight popular vote. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts. Second, they feared a headstrong “democratic mob” steering the country astray. And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power.  Out of those drawn-out debates came a compromise based on the idea of electoral intermediaries. These intermediaries wouldn’t be picked by Congress or elected by the people. Instead, the states would each appoint independent “electors” who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency.

Sort of interesting to me that one of the main reasons for the electoral college has had the exact opposite effect as intended. As with greater and greater percentages of populations in fewer states the rural states where they feared the uninformed grew in electoral power.  

Yep, it's ironic as hell that it was basically intended to prevent that which it has encouraged.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13335]

Dems only need about 100-125K voting democrats to move to each of the following states to flip 9 electoral votes blue: WY, SD, ND. Can’t George Soros pay for 400k people to agree to move? 

[horn4life 3749]

If you want to see the GOP game plan to create Chaos for future elections...

GOP commission refuses to certify election results because of... the use of Dominion voting machines.

"The commission's members include Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin, who ascribes to unsubstantiated claims that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Griffin was convicted of illegally entering restricted U.S. Capitol grounds — though not the building — amid the riots on Jan. 6, 2021, and is scheduled for sentencing later this month. He acknowledged that the standoff over this primary could delay the outcome of local election races."

THIS is how the GOP is going to try to prevent democracy county by county in 2022.

[Jive Turkey 12467]

 

[Hookah Horns 2923]

On 6/14/2022 at 9:31 AM, bolverk said:

Not sure if this is the right place, but this thread is the one getting the traffic. The author below reminds us in clear and compelling terms that NONE of Trump's attempts to tamper with the election would've been possible without our dumbass Electoral College system for determining a presidential election.

 

The Other Cause of January 6
Without the Electoral College, America would never have come so close to an overthrow of its government.

John Eastman. Rudy Giuliani. Donald Trump himself.

These people all bear some responsibility for the events of January 6, 2021. But there is another contributing factor—an institution, not a person—whose role is regularly overlooked, and that deserves a focus in the ongoing January 6 committee hearings: the Electoral College. The Electoral College isn’t responsible for President Trump’s efforts to remain in office despite his clear loss. But it was integral to Trump’s strategy, and it has everything to do with how close he came to success.

Many Americans understand that the country’s anachronistic system of presidential selection, part constitutional and part statutory, can sometimes produce a winner who does not receive the most votes nationwide. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 3 million, but lost in the Electoral College 304–227. Sixteen years earlier, Al Gore won 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush nationwide, but Bush prevailed in the Electoral College 271–266 after the Supreme Court functionally awarded him Florida’s electoral votes. And even without Trump’s machinations, the 2020 election came dangerously close to producing yet again a president who did not win the national popular vote. Joe Biden won approximately 7 million more votes than Trump, and prevailed in the Electoral College 306–232, but just 44,000 additional Trump votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin could have resulted in a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. If that had happened, the House, voting by state delegation, would almost certainly have anointed Trump president despite his second popular-vote loss.

But there’s a problem with the Electoral College that’s distinct from the fact that it sometimes selects a winner who does not receive the most votes nationwide, and from the way it creates a political process that overvalues the concerns of voters in an arbitrary subset of states, increasing polarization, dysfunction, and division. (I elaborate on these dynamics in a recent essay in the Michigan Law Review, as does Jesse Wegman in the book that’s the subject of my essay, Let the People Pick the President.) The problem is this: The Electoral College today is dangerously susceptible to manipulation. Indeed, as 2020 showed, the complex process through which a candidate becomes president contains a number of postelection opportunities to contest or undermine the results of an election—and to do so for reasons purportedly having to do with law and legal process.

Consider the Trump campaign’s many lawsuits designed to delay state certification beyond the “safe harbor” deadline created by the Electoral Count Act, after which a state’s slate of electors is no longer deemed conclusive in the event of a dispute. Or Trump supporters’ efforts to disrupt the statutorily required meetings at which each state’s electors actually cast their votes, and the attempts of ersatz “Trump electors” to lay the groundwork for later challenges to official state slates. Trump also personally pressured state election officials to change election results by “finding” enough additional votes that he would be entitled to all of the state’s electoral votes. Trump loyalists in the Department of Justice, and Trump supporters such as Ginni Thomas, sought to push state legislatures to take the radical step of throwing out state returns on the basis of spurious fraud claims and appointing Trump electors themselves. Trump and at least one of his attorneys sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes from a number of states in which Biden received more votes, pointing to the vice president’s central role in “counting” electoral votes in the last stage of the Electoral College process created by the Twelfth Amendment. When that failed, what became the January 6 attack on the Capitol was an effort to disrupt that final event in the Electoral College timeline.

Put plainly, for a candidate determined to win at all costs, the Electoral College was central to a postelection strategy designed to convert loss into victory. Last night’s opening hearings of the January 6 committee made clear that Trump and his advisers were well aware no good-faith legal basis existed to dispute the election’s results. In a nationwide popular vote, a deficit of 7 million votes would have been impossible to challenge using ostensibly lawful means; the fact of the Electoral College meant that flipping a few close states, or coercing the vice president into throwing out those states’ votes,  would have been enough to change the election’s outcome.

It also seems likely that the very existence of the Electoral College made the public more susceptible to Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy—or at least lulled the public for a time into believing there was nothing wildly wrong with a process in which a defeated candidate exploited pressure points in an attempt to cling to power. Americans are, after all, acclimated to an undemocratic system of presidential selection; perhaps that primed the public to respond in muted ways to Trump’s blatantly antidemocratic moves.

Commonplace political rhetoric about presidential elections suggests as much, framing elections more as complex logic games than crucial acts of self-governance. We discuss “paths to 270”; we contemplate the prospect of things like “running up the score in Broward County.”

It is tempting to dismiss the events of January 6 as largely about Donald Trump rather than our system more broadly. And certainly, any electoral system can be targeted by an autocrat determined to hang on to power. But the Electoral College both provided numerous points of entry and brought the country dangerously close to an actual successful coup.

A genuine bipartisan legislative effort is now under way to reform some of the aspects of the Electoral Count Act that Trump sought to exploit in 2020, as well as to address a number of other vulnerabilities of our electoral system. But at the moment, insufficient attention is being paid to the Electoral College itself. One of the goals of these hearings should be to communicate to the public just how dangerous an institution the Electoral College is—and perhaps to galvanize a serious effort to change it.

There's no doubt in my mind that the EC and our two party system are going to be the death of this country before long. 

[Red Five 40467]

 

Probably just a coincidence.

[Red Five 40467]

 

Dp