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A Deeply Fractured US

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It's there because of the Civil War. The interpretation some people are asking for, absent actual conviction of Trump on something, is flaky.

The more flaky things people keep pushing, the more the substantial things are going to get wrapped up with them and dismissed as a package. People who deem themselves responsible have to resist their unaccountable urges to damage institutions by constantly setting lower standards. They are doing way more harm to "democracy" than Trump ever could.

"Avoid the unnecessary battle". Always sound advice.
Yes, its origin is indeed in the civil war. But they considered it so essential to the bedrock protection of America that they embedded it into the constitution going forward. That’s not nothing.

Some people are asking for that legal tool to be implemented. Others are opining, with some educated background in the matter, that is viably could be implemented, presupposing the alleged fact set in the Trump election case holds up to scrutiny.

None of those people are actual decision makers with the power to cause this to come to pass. They are advocating for the law being applied in the way they believe it is intended. That would be through judicial due process.

You’re absolutely right that some people will see this and choose to not just reject it but to discard other less questionable things alongside it. So be it. In today’s hyper partisan America, where truth and law matter so little to so many, that was going to happen anyway.

I don’t personally have an opinion on the application of the Fourteenth Amendment; I don’t know enough. It will be interesting to watch how this all plays out, and to hear the views of those who know more.
 
Hostile takeover, indeed...

Conservatives Plot To Dismantle U.S. Government, Replace With Trump's Vision​

A 1,000-page handbook lays out how to fire up to 50,000 workers and staff the federal government with an "army" of conservatives.


WASHINGTON (AP) — With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.

Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s second term — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking.

“This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” he said. “People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’”

The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending.

 
A 1,000-page handbook lays out how to fire up to 50,000 workers and staff the federal government with an "army" of conservatives.
In which we learn that actions motivate reactions, and imitation is prompted by success. Looks like conservatives are trying to catch up to progressives in one leap by adopting the latter's techniques.
 
Trying to describe a sphere over time as a line....

Not one axis or even two, but three (at least).

X - individuals and communities
Y - socialists and capitalists
Z - people and the establishment



Left and Right are dead. Now it’s the Establishment vs the People​

Trump, Ramaswamy and RFK Jr show us that America is never going back to normal
MICHAEL LIND
30 August 2023 • 1:56pm

Welcome to the age of the Outsider CREDIT: Win McNamee/Getty
Was Donald Trump a fluke – or is he the first in a series of outsider candidates in the US? Many mainstream Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have hoped that the removal of Trump from the American political scene would mean a return to the pre-2016 norm, with conventional career politicians of both parties running against each other while sharing a broad consensus about public policy. But the surprising popularity of Vivek Ramaswamy and RFK Jr. suggests that there is an enduring constituency among American voters for mavericks, campaigning against the political and economic system while deliberately violating the accepted norms of political speech and behavior.
America’s first-past-the-post electoral system discourages third-party and independent candidacies. In a race with three or more contenders, the candidate with a mere plurality may prevail, even though most voters wanted someone else. And in close races a third-party contender may act as a spoiler, throwing the election to the major-party candidate whom the independent candidate’s voters like the least. As a result, the US has a relatively stable system in which the two major parties amass distinct factions within themselves.
In spite of these obstacles, third-party candidates have often sought the Presidency. In 1980, independent Republican John Anderson challenged both Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. In 1992 and again in 1996, Texan billionaire H. Ross Perot ran for President as the head of his candidate-centered Reform Party.
By siphoning off more votes from one major party than from another, a third-party bid may change the outcome of an election. This is even more likely given America’s electoral college system, in which the President is elected on the basis of electoral college totals, which give some American states more political power than others, rather than on the popular vote alone. It may be no coincidence that in two of the last three elections in which Republican Presidents were elected the winner George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 lost the popular vote but won an electoral vote majority.
While most third-party candidates can be placed on a familiar left-right spectrum, populist candidates tend to scramble these distinctions. Often they combine right-wing views on social or civil rights issues with center-left views on the welfare state and trade and foreign military intervention.
George Wallace, candidate of the American Party in 1968, stirred up racist opposition to desegregation while favouring relatively left-wing economic policies. Ross Perot united Republican pro-military attitudes with protections of American industry against offshoring, which was a cause backed by mostly-Democratic private sector labour unions. In 2016 Trump, who briefly considered a Presidential run as the nominee of Perot’s Reform Party in 2000, promised to build a “wall” along the US-Mexican border to thwart illegal immigration, while breaking with Republican economic orthodoxy by vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare entitlements and denouncing the Iraq War.
As the 2024 election approaches, Trump has been joined by two other outsiders. Foremost amongst them is Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy finance and biotech entrepreneur who has never held public office. He has risen in polls of Republican primary voters, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a conventional career politician, has seen popularity slide. RFK Jr, the son of martyred 1968 presidential candidate Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John Kennedy, Jr., is in no danger of displacing Biden as the Democratic party’s 2024 nominee – but has still received widespread support amongst the party base, spurred on by his embrace of unconventional positions.
Part of the appeal of outsider populist candidates is their rude flouting of the etiquette of conventional politicians. For example, populist candidates supported by their personal wealth and celebrity are more free than conventional politicians to break with the positions preferred by their party’s campaign donors. In the first Republican Presidential debate, Ramaswamy, with a personal fortune of around a billion dollars, mocked his rivals as “bought and paid for,” just as Trump had denounced “donors and special interests” in 2016.
Outsider candidates, including those running in conventional party primaries, also benefit from the inability of the old gatekeepers of broadcast television and metropolitan newspapers to police national political discourse. In the old days the opposition party would permanently damage a Presidential candidate with a single gaffe, taken out of context and endlessly repeated. But the mainstream media has witnessed their power slip away: Ramaswamy’s statements about allowing only 18-to-24 year olds who pass a civics test to vote, and Kennedy’s discussion of allegations of ethnically-targeted bioweapons, have failed to derail their campaigns.
The transgressive and flamboyant styles of today’s outsider populist candidates does not mean that their appeal can be reduced to cults of personality. The same themes of immigration restriction and trade protectionism and re-industrialisation recur among populists of right, left, and center in the US and Europe, because these policies reflect the interests and values of the alienated working-class voters who provide much of the support for populist outsiders, as opposed to conventional libertarian or centrist independents.
RFK Jr’s call for a crackdown on illegal immigration, along with his skepticism about vaccines and vaccine mandates, puts him at odds with Democratic party orthodoxy. He’s an outsider candidate with an eclectic mix of views like Trump or Perot, rather than a traditional protest candidate of the left, like Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein or Cornel West. And contrary to the conventional wisdom of media pundits that Trump’s followers worship him and do not care about specific policies, it’s certain that if Donald Trump began promoting free trade and higher immigration, many if not most of his supporters would desert him.
The outsider is best understood as a man who runs against the existing political system as a whole. Hard to place on the legacy left-right axis, these figures are marked along a different insider-outsider axis. Outsider candidates will continue to dominate as long as substantial numbers of voters feel they are not adequately represented by any mainstream party faction today.
 

The Ulez debate is very far from over​

The expansion has been greeted with fury. Both Labour and Conservatives are now in politically dangerous territory
TELEGRAPH VIEW29 August 2023 • 10:00pm

Protesters opposed to the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone

The first day of Ulez’s expansion across Greater London was greeted with fury. Cameras installed to enforce the low emission zone were vandalised, while people gathered in the centre of the capital to protest.
Supporters of enlarging the zone maintain that large numbers of people back the change, which has been sold as necessary to improve air quality. That may be so, but the strength of feeling is clearly on the side of the opponents.
It is an indictment of the entire political class that, despite this upswell of anger, nobody has proved either willing or able to do anything to stop the spread of Ulez. The Conservative Party won a by-election off the back of promises to resist it, but when push came to shove the Government opted to hide behind legal advice and claim that it was powerless to act.
Sir Keir Starmer, for his part, hinted that he did not support Sadiq Khan’s measure, and several Labour MPs joined the chorus of criticism. But he was similarly unwilling to do anything concrete to try to prevent it from happening.
Mr Khan may hope that, by the time of the next mayoral election, the anger will have abated, as people either trade in their cars for newer models, get used to paying £12.50 a day to drive their vehicles, or give them up entirely. Labour support in the capital is in any case stronger in the centre, which has already lived under Ulez for several years, than in the leafy suburbs.
But that hope may rest upon a misunderstanding of public opinion. This issue has become a question of basic fairness, and the injustice of imposing on people costs that they may well struggle to afford.
It is also arguably the first organised popular revolt against a green policy pushed through by Britain’s political establishment, and it will not have been lost on voters that no mainstream political leader at Westminster was brave enough to properly take their side against the eco-zealots.
We have already seen in the Netherlands how quickly dissatisfaction with the excesses of environmental policy can turn into dissatisfaction with the political elite as a whole.
This is, in short, politically dangerous territory for both Conservatives and Labour.
Protesters yesterday may have been brandishing placards reading “Get Khan Out”, but it is not insignificant that they were doing so outside Downing Street. The consequences of this row are unlikely to be short-lived.
 
The UK government has had its preferred courses of action on environmental policy, energy policy, immigration and finance all over-ruled by civil servants.

The case of the missing "W"s.
The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said today that ''damage, theft, vandalism and pranks did occur in the White House complex'' in the presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. The agency put the cost at $13,000 to $14,000, including $4,850 to replace computer keyboards, many with damaged or missing W keys.

Some of the damage, it said, was clearly intentional. Glue was smeared on desk drawers. Messages disparaging President Bush were left on signs and in telephone voice mail. A few of the messages used profane or obscene language.

''A Secret Service report documented the theft of a presidential seal that was 12 inches in diameter from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,'' next to the White House, on Jan. 19, 2001, the accounting office said.

Six White House employees told investigators that they had seen graffiti derogatory to Mr. Bush on the wall of a stall in a men's room. Other White House employees saw a sticker in a filing cabinet that said, ''Jail to the thief,'' implying that Mr. Bush had stolen the 2000 election. The report said all these employees were members of the current White House, but did not make clear whether any had also worked in the Clinton White House.

Every now and then a good purging is called for. In Quebec it was call the Quiet Revolution in 1964. I've argued before that the Enlightenment couldn't have happened without the purging of the clerics from the University of Glasgow and its conversion from a religious seminary to debating society. There are other modern examples of governments being purged on ideological grounds to make them more "liberal" friendly.

We needn't be so shocked when people suggest removing obstacles. That is what they thought they were voting for when they had elections.
 
Trying to describe a sphere over time as a line....

Not one axis or even two, but three (at least).

X - individuals and communities
Y - socialists and capitalists
Z - people and the establishment
Crazy headline.

The terms "left" and "right" first appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the Ancien Regime to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left.
 

But we tend to look at history in national isolation.

In 1789 the English Anglican Edmund Burke would have sat on the Left. He would have been joined by the Belfast Presbyterian Wolfe Tone whose people celebrated both the Fall of the Bastille and the American Declaration of Independence 13 years previous. Edmund Burke changed his mind and moved towards the Right. Wolfe Tone didn't and led an abortive rebellion of Presbyterians and Catholics against the Anglicans.

Left and Right just describes the results of a singular vote on a singular day.

Institutionalizing them, and their colours and flags, for their totemic values benefits those who wish to lead and direct. The authoritarians.
 
A legal FAFO moment for a lawyer Rudy Guiliani.

Giuliani loses Georgia election worker defamation suit by default, judge rules
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled in favor of two Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation, further ordering the attorney associated with former President Trump to pay sanctions.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss sued Giuliani in December 2021 over his baseless statements claiming the duo helped commit election fraud.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in a 57-page opinion ruled in favor of the two election workers by default after Giuliani resisted turning over discovery in the case. Her ruling suggested Giuliani may have done so to reduce his legal exposure in other cases.

“Perhaps, he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case,” Howell wrote. “Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”

Howell also ordered Giuliani to pay nearly $90,000 and his businesses to pay more than $43,000 to reimburse legal fees the election workers incurred in their attempt to compel Giuliani to turn over the discovery.

The ruling marks a significant legal blow for Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and New York City mayor turned attorney for Trump. Giuliani was indicted this month in Georgia for his actions following the 2020 election, including allegations that overlap with the election workers’ lawsuit.

In the wake of the election, Giuliani made a series of false statements about Freeman and Moss’s work at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where ballots were counted. Giuliani and other Trump allies baselessly claimed the two workers committed election fraud by processing “suitcases” of illicit ballots.

Howell’s ruling finds Giuliani civilly liable by default for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy.

“This 57 page opinion on discovery—which would usually be no more than two or three pages—is a prime example of the weaponization of the justice system, where the process is the punishment. This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI,” Ted Goodman, political advisor to Giuliani, said in a statement.

A trial will still be held to consider damages, and Howell’s ruling gives Giuliani a final opportunity to turn over discovery for the trial.
Giuliani has notably appeared to face a cash crunch as his legal bills mount. He also faces two defamation suits from voting equipment companies and disbarment proceedings.

Trump is scheduled to attend a fundraiser for Giuliani next month.

“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention,” Howell ruled on Wednesday.

Rather than hand over the documents, Giuliani late last month conceded in court filings that the statements in question were false and defamatory.

Howell said the admissions “hold more holes than Swiss cheese,” noting that Giuliani reserved his ability to argue the statements were opinion or constitutionally protected for appeal.

“The reservations in Giuliani’s stipulations make clear his goal to bypass the discovery process and a merits trial — at which his defenses may be fully scrutinized and tested in our judicial system’s time-honored adversarial process — and to delay such a fair reckoning by taking his chances on appeal, based on the abbreviated record he forced on plaintiffs,” Howell ruled.

“Yet, just as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks — even potential criminal liability — bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions, no matter what reservations a noncompliant party may try artificially to preserve for appeal,” she added.

There'll still be a trial, but just to determine the amount of damages awarded.

Some excerpts from the opinion that could describe the commonly seen strategy of both Guiliani and Trump in their many and various legal problems of late - delay, deny, obfuscate. Another domino dropping. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.238720/gov.uscourts.dcd.238720.94.0.pdf

“Perhaps, he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case. Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”

“The reservations in Giuliani’s stipulations make clear his goal to bypass the discovery process and a merits trial — at which his defenses may be fully scrutinized and tested in our judicial system’s time-honored adversarial process — and to delay such a fair reckoning by taking his chances on appeal, based on the abbreviated record he forced on plaintiffs. Yet, just as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks — even potential criminal liability — bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions, no matter what reservations a noncompliant party may try artificially to preserve for appeal.”
 
Unless he has a lot of "fuck you" money to burn, in which case he's getting approximately what he wants.
Doesn't seem likely to be the case. There are reports he's gone hat in hand to Trump to pay for his legal costs, he's selling properties... Good chance Giuliani is on the way to being destitute.
 
Speechless. and not in a good way....


Mitch McConnell freezes for second time during press event​



For the second time in just over a month, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze while speaking to reporters.

At a press event in Covington, Kentucky, the 81-year-old paused for more than 30 seconds when asked whether he would run for-re-election in 2026.

Aides attempted to prompt the senator, but it took several more seconds for Mr McConnell to recover.

He then answered two more questions, which had to be repeated by staff.

"Leader McConnell felt momentarily lightheaded and paused during his press conference today," a spokesperson said after the incident.

A staffer later told the BBC's US partner CBS News the lawmaker "feels fine" but "will be consulting a physician prior to his next event".

Mr McConnell's first verbal lapse occurred during a press conference at the US Capitol in Washington DC on 26 July.

There, he paused mid-sentence for approximately 20 seconds, before being ushered away by his fellow Republican senators.
He later returned and told reporters he was "fine" and had felt "lightheaded".

Mr McConnell, who leads the Republican party's narrow minority in the upper chamber of Congress, was admitted to hospital for a week after suffering a concussion and a fractured rib following a fall outside a Washington area hotel in March.

He was transferred to a rehabilitation facility and did not return to the Senate until mid-April.

After the freezing incident in July, US media reported that Mr McConnell has endured at least three other falls since February.
This latest episode will again raise questions about the health of the Kentucky senator heading into what will be a busy autumn legislative session, as Congress attempts to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of October.

 
Speechless. and not in a good way....


Mitch McConnell freezes for second time during press event​



For the second time in just over a month, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze while speaking to reporters.

At a press event in Covington, Kentucky, the 81-year-old paused for more than 30 seconds when asked whether he would run for-re-election in 2026.

Aides attempted to prompt the senator, but it took several more seconds for Mr McConnell to recover.

He then answered two more questions, which had to be repeated by staff.

"Leader McConnell felt momentarily lightheaded and paused during his press conference today," a spokesperson said after the incident.

A staffer later told the BBC's US partner CBS News the lawmaker "feels fine" but "will be consulting a physician prior to his next event".

Mr McConnell's first verbal lapse occurred during a press conference at the US Capitol in Washington DC on 26 July.

There, he paused mid-sentence for approximately 20 seconds, before being ushered away by his fellow Republican senators.
He later returned and told reporters he was "fine" and had felt "lightheaded".

Mr McConnell, who leads the Republican party's narrow minority in the upper chamber of Congress, was admitted to hospital for a week after suffering a concussion and a fractured rib following a fall outside a Washington area hotel in March.

He was transferred to a rehabilitation facility and did not return to the Senate until mid-April.

After the freezing incident in July, US media reported that Mr McConnell has endured at least three other falls since February.
This latest episode will again raise questions about the health of the Kentucky senator heading into what will be a busy autumn legislative session, as Congress attempts to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of October.

McConnell and Feinstein both need to retire, for their own health and the country's good. They've both served honourably, but both are now at a point where their health is compromising their ability to soundly perform their roles. They deserve to enjoy some retirement. I fear that partisan pressures are keeping some of the 'same' senators in their seats long after they ought to be.
 
I understood McConnell was already not planning to run again; looks like he over-shot his best before date.
 
SOL, then. Pity he went fringe-y; he was a useful mammal as mayor in his time.
He had some good moments, yeah. Some good accomplishments as a prosecutor as well, way back in the day. It’s a shame he got sucked down a rabbit hole, used, and discarded. But he made a lot of choices on that path, so I have little sympathy.
 
McConnell and Feinstein both need to retire, for their own health and the country's good. They've both served honourably, but both are now at a point where their health is compromising their ability to soundly perform their roles. They deserve to enjoy some retirement. I fear that partisan pressures are keeping some of the 'same' senators in their seats long after they ought to be.

Age limits. There is no way someone 80 years old should be shaping the future of a country.
 
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