All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Jack Dracula]

What are the chances that trump supporters will split off the GOP and form their own party?

I think what we're more likely to see is the GOP leadership coopting the core ideas of the extremists while maintaining their own positions of power. It's what they seem to do.
Their underlying mission is still to increase the governmental influence of corporations and their super-wealthy donors. They manage it by motivating their electorate to vote against their own interests through misinformation or religious fervor or by grandstand moves that actually have no hope of success.
For example, the Republican representatives signing the amicus brief.

This thing with Trump is tricky though.

[Tami]

Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Reversal in Congress, Testing Pence

President Trump lost key swing states by clear margins. His barrage of lawsuits claiming widespread voting fraud has been almost universally dismissed, most recently by the Supreme Court. And on Monday, the Electoral College will formally cast a majority of its votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress are plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.

Constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election.

For the vice president, whom the Constitution assigns the task of tallying the results and declaring a winner, the episode could be particularly torturous, forcing him to balance his loyalty to Mr. Trump with his constitutional duties and considerations about his own political future.

The effort is being led by Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, a backbench conservative. Along with a group of allies in the House, he is eyeing challenges to the election results in five different states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin — where they claim varying degrees of fraud or illegal voting took place, despite certification by the voting authorities and no evidence of widespread impropriety.

[ed2962]

You don't actually need that last question answered, do you?

No, but I thought it was funny to see Todd call him out on it.

[Tami]

So much for ‘Biden the socialist’

We should keep track of the Republican lies if only because they are destined to be repeated in future elections. In this case, I am not talking about The Lie (that President-elect Joe Biden stole the election), but about the other lazy attack Republicans deploy against virtually any Democrat: They are socialists!

We heard that gibe continually during the 2020 campaign. We continue to hear it from right-wing, anti-democratic Republicans, who shriek that voting for a 50-50 split in the Senate by electing Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate runoff elections will summon — you guessed it — the rise of socialism and downfall of American capitalism. Poppycock.

Given Biden’s record on everything from the Iraq War to the 1994 crime bill to his campaign rhetoric opposing Medicare-for-all, Republican fear-mongering about a radical Democratic administration never made sense. And certainly, a party that no longer believes in the sanctity of elections and democratic self-government loses all credibility in identifying “radicals.”

Still, it’s worth pointing out that since the election, it has become even more apparent how moderate Biden really is. There is not a single super-progressive among his Cabinet and senior staff picks. To the contrary, his national security team is imbued with a bipartisan vision of international leadership, not a left- or right-wing call for retrenchment. His economic team, with veterans of the Obama administration including Janet Yellen as treasury secretary and serious economists at the Council of Economic Advisers, consists not of soak-the-rich socialists but center-left reformers whose most radical idea might be raising the federal minimum wage (as many states and cities have already done). Whatever you think of retired Gen. Lloyd Austin III, Biden’s pick to lead the Pentagon (my opposition to a general still stands), he was an advocate of a larger stay-behind force in Iraq than the Obama White House team wanted. Austin is not the guy to choose if you want to turn the military upside down.

[Joker]

Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Reversal in Congress, Testing Pence

Jesus Fucking Christ, these people... you lost. Get the **** over it.

[Madam-Shogun-Assassin]

There’s zero reason at this point to assume the Republican Party collapses or that democracy in America has been saved. None. Be wary of liberals & moderates who continue to claim that the courts handing Trump a temporary defeat signals all is well. We’re only here b/c of enormous effort put in by many ppl to prevent a coup, including overcoming relentless efforts by GOP to prevent an election from occurring in the first place. Had turnout not been overwhelming, had results been close, things would be different right now

GOP shows no indication of retreating from its push toward a fascist takeover of the gov’t. Now we’re seeing the militant wing of the movement show itself most forcefully since 2017 in VA, with a month still to go until the inauguration of a president they don’t acknowledge. Meanwhile the neoliberal bipartisan establishment—which has been weakened by the majority of Republicans abandoning bipartisanship altogether in favor of full blown fascism—has spent the post-election period attacking the left & civil rights mvmt more than the far right GOP.

So, no— Anyone saying Trump has been defeated or who’s laughing at the white supremacists terrorizing churches or claiming this is over belongs to the camp of folks who repeatedly say “I never thought this could happen in America.” Ignore them b/c they’ll get us all killed.

[worstblogever]

Jesus Fucking Christ, these people... you lost. Get the **** over it.

Trump has never, not once in his life "gotten over it". The dumb f***er still takes pot shots at Rosie O'Donnell decades later. He's still furious at the Central Park Five for not actually killing that jogger like he said they did. He simply is incapable of processing failure, pathologically, he's that stupid.

[Tami]

Trump has never, not once in his life "gotten over it". The dumb f***er still takes pot shots at Rosie O'Donnell decades later. He's still furious at the Central Park Five for not actually killing that jogger like he said they did. He simply is incapable of processing failure, pathologically, he's that stupid.

This mess we're in evolved in part from Trump never getting over what Obama said about him at that event so many years ago.

[worstblogever]

Why is that whenever the president does something unseemly, instead of addressing the issue, republicans want to play 'what aboutism'?"

Because "whataboutism" is one of the main tools of fascists.

Which the Republicans trying to reject democracy and the 2020 election results qualifies as. So it makes sense that they're going to the "whataboutism" strategy. Fascism Playbook 101.

[PaulBullion]

This mess we're in evolved in part from Trump never getting over what Obama said about him at that event so many years ago.

Maybe we need a strategy like in the comics, when they defeat Parasite by overloading them.

We need every A-list celebrity, from Oprah to the cast of Dallas, insulting Trump every day, every minute. Until he implodes.

[zinderel]

There seems to be an incongruity with the idea that Trump is wrong to ask the courts to reject the results of an election, and that over a hundred elected members of Congress should not be seated, because of a bad amicus brief. Asking the courts for something stupid is not the equivalent of rebellion.

The dissent isn't because anyone's in favor of the Trump administration argument, but because Alito and Thomas believe the court should address any dispute between states, at which point they can make a ruling about why the Trump administration argument is stupid.

I’m sorry, but a ‘stupid’ attempted murder is still attempted murder, and an attempted coup - no matter how stupid - is STILL an attempted coup. If they don’t get punished for treason, which they absolutely SHOULD be, then they should STILL Be refused a seat at the table. Why? They have demonstrated their clear inability to function as government officials and representatives of the people by supporting a stupid attempt at rebelling against the nation they were elected to serve. They have demonstrated that they have no desire to SERVE, only to rule. And that is just as unAmerican - and disqualifying - as the abject treason this gang of idiots displays.

[Malvolio]

There's a lyric from the Rush song "Witch Hunt," that describes Trump and his supporters to a T:

Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump has never, not once in his life "gotten over it". The dumb f***er still takes pot shots at Rosie O'Donnell decades later. He's still furious at the Central Park Five for not actually killing that jogger like he said they did. He simply is incapable of processing failure, pathologically, he's that stupid.

Hell, Trump still has his panties in a bunch over having lost that antitrust trial to the NFL....in 1987!

[Kirby101]

Kind of nuts watching Lamar Alexander on Meet the Press desperately trying to deflect from Trumps refusal to concede. Chuck Todd keeps trying ask about thee results of this election and the lawsuits, but Lamar keeps going, "What about Stacy Abrams! You talk 100 times about Trump, why can't you talk once about Stacy Abrams?!" Todd's like, "I have talked about her, but I'm not here to debate about her now. Why is that whenever the president does something unseemly, instead of addressing the issue, republicans want to play 'what aboutism'?"

What does he think Abrams did, besides getting people to register and vote?

[DrNewGod]

There's a lyric from the Rush song "Witch Hunt," that describes Trump and his supporters to a T:

Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand.

In keeping with the season, Dickens told us long ago in introducing Ignorance and Want, "Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy."